The Most Happy Bride
by Harold Saxon
Summary: Wilf's attempt to restore Donna's memories of the Doctor goes horribly wrong and leaves her stranded in blood-thirsty 18th century revolutionary France. Will the Doctor and the Master be able to find her in time and bring her back home? COMPLETED
1. Chapter 1

**Author's note:**

_The Most Happy Bride belongs to a set of stories called: A Timelord and his madman, from which the first installment was posted in January 2010, directly after the final episode of the 10__th__ Doctor. It is a sort of alternative season 5, in which the 10__th__ Doctor has fortunately survived the events of "The End of time". Wandering alone in search of the Master, he finally succeeded to save the Master from the Timelock in the first story of the series called "His Silent Mind". Other installments include (In the right order): "Judoon Justice", "A Murderous Feast", "Shattered Worlds", and "Before Harry met Lucy". If you're interested in the rest of the series and don't want to miss out on the Doctor's and the Master's previous adventures, hit the author button and find the links on my author page. _

_In this story, both Timelords are finally traveling together as equal companions, and are following the trail of the illustrious and mysterious Infinity Corporation that seems capable to manipulate time and put the Master's drums inside people's heads. This story begins with a flashback to the final scene of "A Murderous Feast". After a dangerous encounter with a species of aliens called Timewarps who were causing havoc in an ancient Roman town, the Doctor returns Wilf home to 21st century London. After saying goodbye to the Doctor, Wilf has a moment alone with the Master... _

**The Most Happy Bride**

**Chapter 1**

**1.**

_14 months earlier, Cheswick lane, London._

"Here." Wilf pushed his mobile phone into his hand. "Take this. I got a new one for Christmas. Wouldn't know what to do with two mobiles."

The Master turned to check if the reassuring sight of the Tardis was still behind him. The blue light on the top was starting to show a soft blue glow, indicating that the Doctor was about to start up the engines. Better to keep this short. "And what am I supposed to do with it?" He asked, cocking an eyebrow, and showing not much interest.

"You give me a call next time you find yourself in trouble."

"You want me to call you?"

"Yes, and don't use it for anything else!" Wilf added hurriedly. "No prank-calls or anything to scare off my family, or my friends! I won't have it!"

"What are you trying to do?" The Master replied with an amused look on his face. "I know you just love to play the Doctor's dad, but you can't adopt us all." He mocked.

"I figured you might need some help." Wilf shrugged. "One day. When the Doctor is not around." He paused and stared at the Master, his old eyes shining with sympathy. "I know. It can't be easy for you. Not after what happened."

"Don't pity me old man." The Master replied in a soft voice. Teasing Wilf was fine, but now the old man was trying to venture into much darker territories where there will be monsters. "I've killed before. I've done more horrible things than you could ever imagine." He told him.

"But none of that has ever mattered to you. Until now." Wilf replied quietly. "You saved my life." He finally said. "I saw the look on your face when you…you killed her. I've seen that look before. Back in the war. In the army. Bright young lads, full of life, who went to the continent to fight, but came back hollow, aged into old men." Wilf paused. "It must be hard, trying to live with it."

The Master looked away for a moment, for Wilf's kindness had affected him more than he would ever admit. "I didn't-" He stopped. After all this time, the words still didn't want to come. "She said something to me, and I just, I couldn't…" He stared back at Wilf, who waited patiently.

The Master shook his head.

"Can't find the words, hey?" Wilf said, staring at him compassionately. "That's alright. At least you've reassured me now that the Doctor won't be traveling with some remorseless monster."

"Yeah. Right." The Master muttered with a sad smile.

"Keep the phone." Wilf repeated.

"You're one annoying old man." The Master told Wilf, but he was grateful, and slipped the mobile in his pocket.

The Master was about to head back to the Tardis when he thought of something. He turned back.

"Wilf, did you mean those things you said to me, about your granddaughter? What was her name again? That fiery redhead, Dena, Dina?"

"Donna. Her name is Donna."

"Donna!" The Master snapped his fingers, his eyes glimmering with a quick and sly intelligence. "That's right. Do you really want her to remember her time with the Doctor?"

"Oh, that would be the most amazing thing that I could wish for." Wilf said with a bleeding heart. "Only, that's impossible, right? Even the Doctor couldn't help her."

"The Doctor doesn't always know the answer to everything." The Master took a small object out of his pocket. It was Dea's silver earring that had once carried the white sphere. He handed it over to Wilf.

"Give this to her."

"What is it?"

"It's a third generation chameleon device. Not a very good one I must say, but I do know that the Timewarps have successfully used it to help them to return to their original form. I once had such a device, disguised as a seal ring, and it saved my life. This one, I wanted to keep for myself, just in case my guarantee on my immortality runs out. You never know when it comes in handy." He smirked. "But perhaps your granddaughter has more use for it right now. This little trinket will protect her and help to restore her memory."

"Thank you." Wilf blurted, lost for words.

"Thank yourself, old man." The Master said, embarrassed by his sudden act of kindness, he quickly headed back to the Tardis.

Wilf studied the earring lying in the palm of his hand. "Hang on." He muttered. "How does this thing work? Does it mean that I can tell her about the Doctor now?" But his voice hardly carried above the rising sound of the Tardis engine, and when Wilf raised his head, he was just in time to see the blue box dematerialize in front of his eyes.

**2.**

Wilf didn't know what to do with the Master's gift. He kept it with him, tucked away inside his pocket, and once in while, when he was visiting Donna in her new flat or when she was coming over, he would hesitate to give it to her, but he never did. What was he supposed to tell her? Donna dear, I've this chameleon thing for you, and it will help you to remember a most wonderful man who took you traveling through time and space last year in a flying wooden box. Now that sounded really crazy. She would probably think that her grandfather had turned complete senile. Besides, Donna and Shaun were getting married now. They had picked out a date in April, and Donna being Donna, had been driving herself and everyone else close to exhaustion with planning this most important day of her life ever since the poor lad said yes to her proposal. So much had to be arranged, and she had been dragging her family from one expensive shop to another. The last few weeks had been just one mad sequence of cake shops, bridal bouquets, and flower parlors. There was hardly any time left for poor Wilf to talk to his granddaughter in private.

"What do you think gramps?" Donna asked, as she stood in front of the double mirror in her wedding dress and made an effort to suck in her tummy. They were in one of the more affordable bridal shops in Fleet Street. With Sylvia trapped in heavy traffic, Wilf was left alone in a tiny hallway waiting for his granddaughter to parade to him her choice of wedding dresses. "Do I look nice in it? Or is it like the other one…too much zeppelin trapped inside a sausage skin? Oh, who am I kidding? I never get those pounds off before April. I might as well go next door and buy a tent."

"Don't be silly. You look wonderful." Wilf gave her a peck on her cheek. "And don't let your mother tell you otherwise." Wilf wasn't lying. She looked beautiful. No man could set eyes on her and not fall a little bit in love with this blushing bride to be.

But Donna wasn't reassured. "I think the shoulders may be too big." She said, scrutinizing her reflection. "I'm telling you, they're absolutely humongous, like someone has stitched two puff-up pastries on this dress." She made a little twirl. "I can't wear this! Compared to that amount of shoulder padding my head looks like a shriveled little orange."

"I don't think your head looks too small at all." Wilf sighed. "You really shouldn't worry too much."

"I am a complete nerve wreck, that's what I am." Donna puffed a red lock of hair out of her face in desperation and sat down next to her granddad in a big balloon of lace and fabric. "I just…" She paused and gazed back at her granddad with a trace of panic in her eyes. "I don't want it to turn out like the last time. Gramps, I love this man. I don't want to mess it up…again."

"Now hang on. That's not fair. Last time wasn't your fault."

"If it wasn't my fault, why did Lance disappear on our wedding day?" Donna asked. Because of the meta-crisis, she remembered nothing of her deadly encounter with the Racnoss queen after the Doctor had wiped her mind. In her recollection, her treacherous fiance simply didn't show up at the altar. "I must have done something to upset him." She gave Wilf a funny look. "It was the dress, wasn't it?"

Wilf grabbed her hand and pinched it softly. "Of course it wasn't. What happened to Lance was…unfortunate, but maybe, that was just fate trying to tell you that he wasn't the right one you've been waiting for." Wilf swallowed, he knew he was supposed to be reminding her of how lucky she was to have Shaun now, but he still felt a nasty sting in his old heart when he recalled how happy she was when she traveling with the Doctor. Although she seemed content with her current life, Wilf knew that the old Donna wouldn't have wanted this.

"Shaun does love me, doesn't he?" She stared into the distance with a vacant expression on her face. "I think we should be very happy together." She added with a lack of conviction. It wasn't that she didn't love him, but sometimes, just sometimes, it was as if she knew that something was still missing in her life. Something very important.

"Oh well." She slapped on her knees to flatten down the bulgy dress and stood back up. "I should get on with it, still got 5 other dresses to try." She pushed the curtains of the fitting cabin to one side. "I better pick one out before mum gets here and I end up trying to strangle her with the bridal veil. I'm telling you, whatever she is going to say, I'm not going to wear a corset. If I am going to get married, I want to be able to breathe when I sit down and not be squeezed like a lemon."

Before she could head back inside, Wilf called out to her. "Donna."

In a moment of weakness, he had brought out the Master's little gift.

Donna turned back to her granddad. "Yes?"

Wilf licked his lips nervously while his thumb went over the smooth surface of the silver earring. "Before I forget, I have a little something for you." He showed the Dea's silver earring to her.

Donna's mouth dropped open as she took the jewel from her grandfather and held it between her thumb and fingers. Carefully, she turned the silver disk around to study the markings. "This is beautiful. Look at the pattern on this thing. It looks so old."

"Well it is. In a way." Wilf kept staring at her face, anxious to see if there was any change visible yet to reassure him that she was starting to remember the Doctor.

"You really shouldn't have bought me this." She said with a twinkle in her eyes. "This must have been very expensive."

"Oh, don't you worry. I got it from an old friend of mine. His wife died." He noticed the look on his granddaughter's face and realized what he just said. "It's not from his wife though." Wilf corrected himself quickly. "She never wore it. It was a family heirloom from her side of the family. I got it for an apple and an egg."

"Thanks gramps. It's absolutely wicked." She beamed and hugged him tightly. If she had been feeling a bit downhearted, Wilf's lovely gift had made her forget all about it again. "I am going to make it into a hanger for my silver necklace and wear it at the wedding. It would be perfect! Wait till Nerys sees this!" She shrieked excitedly. "I have to show this to her this. She is so gonna die!"

**3.**

_1824, prison de l'Abbaye, Paris_

She had very little to prepare herself for the fateful day. On her final request, a small wooden box was bought to her tiny cell, with inside the very last of her belongings that the prison guards had allowed her to keep. There was an old wooden brush to comb her hair, a dented copper rougebox that she used to apply a little color to her lips and cheeks, and a small bottle of perfume with just a tiny drop left on the bottom. She dipped it behind her ears to cover the foul smell of fear and desperation that lingered around her like a shroud. Right before they came to collect her, she braided her long golden locks and pinned it down on top of her head, before covering her hair with a white bonnet. After she had washed her hands, she stared down at her reflection in the murky pail of water. Her hand gently touched her pearl earring that dangled from her left ear, as if to reassure herself that it was still there. Then she traced her thin, graceful neck down over her collar-bone till she caressed the silver locker that she always wore close to her heart.

Although she told herself that she was prepared, her blood still ran cold when she heard the heavy footsteps in the hall, followed by the turn of key in the rusty padlock.

She straightened her back till she stood tall and dignified. Calmly, she turned around to face the men.

"Madame." The French soldier informed her. "It is time."

She gazed back at her executioners with her green piercing eyes. "I am ready." Anne replied in a calm voice.

**4.**

It puzzled Wilf that nothing happened after he had given the earring to Donna, but to be fair, she didn't have the chance to wear it very often. It went straight to the vault in Silvia's bedroom after she discovered what kind of ridiculously pricey present he had given his granddaughter. It only came out again when it was taken to the jeweler to be made into a necklace, and even then it was Silvia who was carrying it in her handbag instead of Donna, because she thought her clumsy daughter was bound to lose it somewhere on the way. When the necklace was finally finished, and Donna did get to try it on in the store, Wilf held his breath and kept staring at her in the hope to see a change. A twinkle in the eyes, a smile on her lips perhaps that told him that she finally remembered what she had lost. It didn't need to be much.

But he was disappointed.

Nothing happened, and Donna's life just went on as it had before.

It took weeks for Wilf to finally overcome this awful setback and to accept the idea that Donna would never regain her memories of the Doctor again. In the end, the conclusion was simple: The Master's little trinket didn't work. Wilf told himself that it was perhaps better this way. Maybe it was simply not meant to be, and Donna was supposed to lead a normal life just like everyone-else, one without all those wacky adventures and dangerous encounters with monsters and aliens. But still, when Wilf sometimes catches that lost look on her face, his old heart wept.

Time passed by. Soon it was April the 25th, the day that Donna and Shaun were to be married. Against all expectations, it was a beautiful and sunny spring day, and the tiny church in which the ceremony was going to take place was packed with relatives, friends and family, all gathered and dressed up to share this special day with the happy couple. The guests were already seated inside and were waiting for the bride while Wilf, dressed in his best three-piece suit, was still apprehensively pacing up and down in the porch, making himself ready to lead his granddaughter down the aisle.

He let a sigh of relief when Donna finally came out of the restroom. Quickly he handed the bouquet of flowers of white and pink roses back to her.

"That took quite some time. I thought you did a runner." He joked nervously.

"Sorry. It's these zippers, they're going everywhere, but just not where I can reach them apparently." She replied with flustered cheeks. She straightened her veil and carefully stroked the folds out of her dress. "Alright. How do I look? Do I look good? Do I look nice?" Donna rambled.

Wilf gazed at her, his eyes glistening. "More than nice. You look absolutely splendid. Your dad would have been so proud."

Donna sucked in a deep breath of air and smiled. "Thank you." She whispered, deeply moved. She gazed into the church where rows of friends and relatives were waiting for her. She took his hand and gave it a little squeeze. "Now, please gramps, hold my hand and walk me down the aisle. Don't let go till we reach Shaun, okay?"

Wilf nodded. They locked arms and walking side by side, they entered the church.

**5.**

The guard pulled her down the cart and up the slippery steps of the scaffold, where the thick bed of straw was moist and stained by the blood of her unlucky predecessors. She was pushed forward, and suddenly she was staring at a sea of faces, all angry and hostile and shouting for her head. A pang of panic hit her. She whirled around and bumped into the large sweaty belly of the executioner, a lard barrel of a man wearing a black hood that covered his eyes. His breath stank of cheap beer and the decaying bits of meat stuck between his rotting teeth. "Bonjour Madame." He told her and grabbed her by her wrist. To her horror, he kissed her hand like a streetdog would lick a tasty bone. "Such delicate white skin. So very young and fresh." He whispered, before his meat-cleaver's hand grasped the back of her neck. "Such…a shame."

He pushed her down on the chopping board. Anne gasped when the cold sticky wetness of the wood touched her warm skin. When the upper wooden panel was lowered on her neck, she almost jumped, fearing that it was the blade of the guillotine dropping down on her.

The commander in charge of the execution stepped forward and raised his hand to silence the crowd. He was only partly succeeding in his efforts. The mob was like a pack of mongrel dogs, hungry for blood. Anne trembled like a leaf when the basket with cut-off heads was shoved below her. The dead aristocrats stared back at her with their last expressions of shock and horror frozen on their cold faces as they beckoned her to join them.

A shot was fired in the air by one of the commander's soldiers, and this time, the crowd did become silent. After clearing his throat, the commander tried again.

"Good citizens of Paris. Today is brought before you Madame Boleyn, the mistress of the late Marques de Lebrun, who has, in her greed and great arrogance made many offences against the good people of the Republic. For her crimes the Liberty court has condemned her to suffer the punishment of death."

He nodded to the executioner before he stepped back. A soldier behind Anne started ruffling a drum, and the blood-smeared blade of the guillotine was hosted up to the very top. Anne wanted to scream but forced herself to press her lips together. She had to keep faith. Her lord would not abandon her if she showed him that she was worthy, for wasn't it always how it worked for women like her?

"Madame Boleyn." The commander said, glancing down at her with as little compassion as a costumer would have waiting for the butcher to slice his piece of lam. "Would you have anything to say to the good citizens of Paris?"

Anne swallowed. "As a matter of fact, yes I have."

The officer signaled to the drummer to reduce the noise. "Madame?"

"Before I go. I beg you, let me pray to my lord."

The commander nodded. It was not an unreasonable request. "Of course Madame. As you wish."

Anne closed her eyes, trying to find that one little place of tranquility and control left inside her troubled and frightened mind, and began to pray.

"My lord, please save my soul. My lord, please save my soul." She could hear the drums rise again, and feel the rough hand of the executioner brush aside the last wandering locks of hair to clear the path for the blade. She stole a look at her audience, and was horrified to find the dark hooded creature standing at the back. The tall figure was dressed in a long black robe, and his face was a grinning skull with blue fires burning where the eyes should have been. The crescent blade of his scythe caught the late afternoon sun and scattered beams of light in all directions. No-one else but her could notice his presence. He was here to collect her soul, a debt for which her payment was long since overdue. Horrified, she shut her eyes. Her fear had now become a palatable thing, a bitter creature that lived inside her mouth and dried her tongue. Still, she kept praying, her lips moving quickly as she kept repeating the words.

"Please my lord, save my soul. My lord, save my soul. Save my soul…"

Her pearl earring suddenly shone with a strange light, as if someone was reflecting a beam of sunlight at the unfortunate girl using a mirror to trouble her in her final hours. Few in the audience noticed it at first, but then the light grew brighter, and larger, till even Anne picked up the harsh brightness through her eyelids. Still too frightful to look at the hooded figure, she opened her eyes and fixed them on the fear struck audience below. An old croon standing near the scaffold pointed at her with a shaking hand.

"Witch!" She shouted, her wrinkled old face was struck by fear. "She is a dirty witch!"

Her wild allegations caused wide spread turmoil and panic. A woman screamed and fainted. The sensation-hungry men and women at the back pushed their way forward to the front row to get a better look at her, while the God-fearing people in the front tried to elbow their way back and made the sign of the cross for protection.

"Kill her!" A man shouted. "Quickly, before she summons her master the devil!"

"No!" A woman yelled. "Don't do it with a blade! She will come back as a headless ghost and haunt us! If she is a witch, she must be burned!"

"Yes! Burn her! Burn her!" Came the consensus from the crowd.

The executioner, who was a cruel but simple-minded man, looked at the commander with an expression of pained confusion on his face. "What should I do sir? I am not qualified to perform public burnings. You need another license for that."

"Ignore them you buffoon." The commander hissed, staring at the restless crowd with growing concern. "Do your job, and be quick with it before this gets out of hand!"

"Yes sir." The executioner replied, and continued hoisting up the heavy blade with renewed confidence till the back struck the wooden beam at the top. "On your signal sir."

Anne took in a deep breath. It may be her very last.

"Now!" The commander ordered.

The drums stopped and the blade fell, dropping all the way down in a fraction of a second. It sliced through nothing but air, coming only to a final halt when it cut into the wooden support beam below.

**6.**

"Don-Donna…?" Shaun stared into the face of the pale blond who had suddenly appeared before him. He stepped back and blinked his eyes in disbelief. On the spot where his fiance and would-be bride stood only a second before, was now another woman, a total stranger, who was wearing her wedding dress and holding her bouquet. "Who…who are you?" Shaun muttered, with eyes as big as saucers.

Anne was equally shocked. One moment ago she had been facing almost certain death by the guillotine in front of an angry mob in Paris. But now she had suddenly ended up in front of the altar with a Moor, wearing a oversized gown in a church filled with wide-eyed strangers.

"Oh my Lord." She whispered in both relief and gratitude. "You do work in mysterious ways." She quickly picked up her gown and started heading for the exit, knowing that the groom and the bride's family wouldn't be too pleased about the sudden disappearance of the unlucky girl who had surely taken her place. Making good use of the overall confusion, she was able to walk halfway back the aisle when an old man blocked her way and grabbed her by the arm.

"Donna?" Wilf muttered. For a moment, he was doubtful if the Master's device had somehow altered Donna, changing her from a fiery redhead into a pale blond. But one look into her green piercing eyes, and he quickly regained his wit. "You're not my granddaughter!" He said with great certainty. "What the heck have you done to her?"

"Let go of me old man." She pulled away from hem and started to run.

"Hey! Stop! Come back!" Wilf shouted.

"What's Donna doing? I thought she really wanted to marry this bloke?" Gladys said, as she watched the bride rush by.

"That's not Donna! It's someone else!" Wilf shouted, as he came running after her. Catch her! She might know where she is!"

Anne was almost out of the church when someone grabbed hold of her bridal veil and jerked her back.

She swirled around in surprise, and stared right into Silvia's very angry face.

"Oh no, you're not leaving before you tell me where my daughter is you blond little tart." Silvia hissed. "What are you, an alien? What did you do to her?"

"Close the doors!" Wilf yelled, waving his hands at the men sitting closest to the entrance. At the altar, Shaun had finally snapped out of his trance and was rushing over to Silvia's aid. Anne panicked. Spinning around, she pulled away from the elder woman with force and headed for the way out. A sharp pain cut through her left earlobe when the bridal veil was pulled from her head. She barely noticed it. With Donna's worried family following close at her heels, she rushed out of the church and into the streets.

**7.**

_April 2020, London Library, London._

The letters on the page started to dance in front of his eyes, making it almost impossible to keep his mind on what was already a very boring text. The Doctor sighed and removed his dark-rimmed glasses.

"For the last time, will you please stop doing that? I'm trying to read here!"

The Master, who sat at the other side of the desk, stopped playing with the light switch of the table lamp for a moment. It was one of those old-fashioned ones, with a green glass hood and a base of solid bras. It fitted perfectly in the sophisticated antique decor of the London library where they currently were, although the charm of the place had long since been lost to the Doctor's companion. The Master was absolutely bored out of his mind. They had been stuck in the library for what seemed ages after the Doctor had dragged him here do some research on the origin of the Infinity Corp. Three days of cultivating mold inside a reading room wasn't exactly the Master's idea of having a stupendous amount of fun.

"Can't we go anywhere else?" The Master asked in a whiny voice. "And why the hell are you still reading?" He added sourly.

"Because, unlike you, I'm still investigating." The Doctor replied, trying hard to remain calm when his companion started playing with the desk-light again. On and off. On and off it went. Like he was having some mad seizure.

"You know, you are a very slow reader." The Master commented with a big yawn.

The Doctor peered over the rim of his volume. "Don't you have something to read?" He urged.

"Oh I've finished my assignment ages ago." The Master nodded at the dusty volumes piled up high next to him. "Nothing interesting in there except for a couple of references on that secret brotherhood of 15th century monks who mark their members with that same emblem of the Infinity Corporation. It appears that our religious brothers don't take their vows of celibacy too seriously, considering the amount of bills they have to settle for the good company of the fairer sex." He grinned. "But except for that juicy bit, it was quite a boring read really."

"Well, there are still enough records left that we need to go through. If you've got nothing to do, why don't you take the next section?" The Doctor suggest, not without irritation. "The 18th century archives are on the second floor. Be my guest."

The Master wrinkled up his nose. "You're joking. I didn't rush through those dusty volumes to earn myself yet another load of boring reading material to numb my brain and torture my neurons to death. Go read it yourself."

"Fine. Just leave me alone then." The Doctor replied. "It could take a while though. Like you said, I am such so slow reader." He added with a little grin.

The Master sucked in his cheeks, leaned forward and aimed the desk light right on his companion's face. He started tapping madly on the light-switch till the light flashed like a migraine picture show right into the Doctor's eyes.

The Doctor might have more patience with him than with any other of his companions, but this time, the Master had pushed him a too far. The Doctor jumped under the desk and pulled the pin contact out of the socket, before staring at the Master with a look that would make a sane man's blood run cold. Unfortunately, it didn't exactly work on the Master.

"I said, stop it!" Hissed the Doctor.

"Fine." Snapped the Master with a child-like defiance. "If you want to play it that way." He turned around and waved at the lady librarian who attended a desk nearby. "Hey you." He shouted, breaking the silence in the reading room and making all the other visitors turn their heads. "Could you help us out here miss?"

The irritated librarian came rushing over to the two strange gentlemen. "Could you please lower your voice sir?" She asked in polite but urgent tune. "This is a designated study area. Our guests here do appreciate silence."

"I apologize my dear." The Master smiled most charmingly at her. "What is your name? Oh don't tell, I bet it is Charlene. You do look like a Charlene to me."

The librarian furrowed her pretty brows. "How did you…?"

"Stop poking inside her head!" The Doctor hissed. "Didn't I tell you to stop doing that to people!"

"Charlene my dear." The Master continued, fully ignoring the Doctor with a mischievous look in his eyes. "Now you probably wonder why my companion and I are stuck here inside this dusty reading room while outside the sun is shining and the birds are singing. We're doing a little research and need some help to finish it. So if you could be so kind to help us out, than perhaps we still have a chance to get out of here before I start sprouting roots."

"Well, if you need to know where you can find certain volumes, I can assist you." Charlene the librarian answered.

"Wonderful!" The Master replied in a voice that was a tad too loud for the Doctor's likings. "Now my nerdy friend here is trying to find out more about late 20th century _pornography_. He's particularly interested in the culture of human exploitation of women in the northern hemisphere. So if you could point us in the right direction where to find some historical documentation on that subject, we would be so grateful!"

The Doctor turned red while the Master stared back at the blushing girl with a content smirk on his face.

"You mean…you want…" Charlene blurted.

"Pornographic journals." The Master said in a calm voice, as if was perfectly normal to ask for such a thing. "Preferably with clear visual representations of the human female reproduction organs. I think my companion here is particularly fixated on the mammary glands. So if you could bring us more documentation about those?"

"I am NOT fixated on mammary glands…" The Doctor stammered, his eyes wide with naive innocence, and getting redder and more embarrassed by the minute. "I'm sorry, he's not serious about anything, just ignore him…He's rambling…"

"Of course you are fixated, you've been staring at dear Charlene's glands ever since we sat down here." The Master said and turned to the shocked librarian. "He told me he has especially picked out this desk, so he could study your assets from the most optimal angle."

Charlene covered her breasts and stared at the Doctor with a look of pure disgust on her face.

"Don't listen to him please. I'm not like that! I swear I am not the least interested in your breasts!" The Doctor blurted out in one breath. He suddenly noticed the 20 pairs of eyes across the reading room that were staring at him in the most unfavorable way.

"Oh come on, don't be too shy to admit it." The Master continued, turned back to Charlene. "Sure he's smitten by you. Or he wouldn't have wasted an entire afternoon to try to discover what was underneath your skirt yesterday."

"Get out of my face you sick pervert!" Charlene cried, furious and slamming the heavy volume that was lying in front of the Doctor shut. "And take that creep with you!" She added, pointing at the grinning Master.

"You know, it still surprises me that with your supposed massive intellect, you're absolutely no match against the fury of a scorned woman." The Master told him with a content smirk when they were making their way out of building as quickly and as discreetly as possible.

"She was completely embarrassed and humiliated." The Doctor told him, pacing angrily down the staircase. "Nothing what I could have said would have helped after the damage that you've done."

"Oh was that why you acted like a mindless gobbling turkey in front of her?" The Master commented teasingly. "For a moment I thought you had swallowed your tongue."

The Doctor took in a deep breath and counted slowly back to ten to ease down the angry tirade that was welling up inside him. He had to repeatedly remind himself to be more patience with him. Unfortunately, this kind of calamities had not been uncommon lately. The Master had been acting absolutely impossible ever since their last disastrous encounter with Lucy Cole. The Doctor knew very well that he had not yet been able to deal with the tragic demise of his ex-wife, for which his stubborn companion was still largely blaming himself. The way that the Master was acting out his frustration on him was his way of coping with his grief by simply denying that it ever existed. Some day, the Doctor should confront him with this, but today, he settled on giving him a scrutinizing look as they headed back inside the Tardis.

"Finally! No more dusty old books and frigid librarians!" The Master sighed, clapping in his hands and slamming the door behind him with his back. He was all too eager to get the hell out of here.

The Doctor went over to the Tardis control to face the vibrant display of dials and rows of flashy warning lights that were supposed to be informative, but from which true meanings had been lost with the disappearance of the instruction manual ever since the Doctor had redecorated the cockpit. Worriedly, he wondered how long it would take for Charlene to forget about this embarrassing encounter. One week? Two weeks? A month perhaps? He imagined how each of his female companions would have reacted, and finally settled on a safe bet of 5 years.

The Master, glad that he finally got it his way, leaned towards the Doctor over the console. "Tell me my dear companion." He said with a triumphant grin. "Where are we heading now?"

The Doctor shot him a disapproving glance, and then began to step lightly around the console, flicking switches and feeding coordinates in the helmic regulator without meeting his gaze. If the Master thought that their boring study days in the London library were over, he was wrong. Let's hope Charlene won't hold a grudge all the way until 2025.

The Doctor had just started the engines when a cell phone rang. Slightly surprised, but assuming that it was the small mobile that Martha had given him in case of emergencies, he patted down his many pockets to find the phone.

He punched in the receive button "Yes hello?" He said, but all he heard was the monotonous hum of an empty phone-line. The doctor cocked an eyebrow. "Martha? Is that you?" He tried. To his surprise, the phone rang again.

"What's going on?" The Doctor muttered, looking at the device in his hand with a look of puzzlement.

"Oh wait a minute. That's probably mine." The Master opted, gracefully fishing out a small blue mobile out of his pocket.

"You've got a mobile phone?" The Doctor asked, astonished.

"Wilf gave it to me. I think it might be him." The Master explained as if was the most normal thing in the world that one of Doctor's old companions would give him a ring. "Oh don't throw a fuzz." Noticing the change of expression on the Doctor's face. "The old man probably caught a glimpse of a two-headed horse or something. He's quite easily impressed."

"You've got a mobile phone from Wilf?" The Doctor repeated.

The Master rolled his eyes at him and stuck a finger in his ears to block out the noise.

"Wilf, is that you? Why are you calling me?"

"Let me talk to him." The Doctor muttered, but the Master held him off like a schoolboy with an interesting toy who didn't want his mate to get his greasy hands all over it.

"What?" He said, smiling delightfully, "I'm sorry. The reception is really dreadful. There are some serious disturbances in the space-time continuum in this place. Can you repeat what you just said about…what's her name… Dina…Donna?"

"Donna? What's wrong with Donna?" The Doctor asked, immediately worried.

The Master put his finger on his lips and shushed at the Doctor. Somehow, he didn't seem so pleased with the call anymore. "Yes. I know she's your only granddaughter, but what the heck are you yelling at me for? Why are you so upset?"

At the other end of the line, 18 years, 4 months and 3 days back in time, Wilf was quickly losing his patience and his temper. "You liar!" He shouted. "You told me that it was going to bring her memory back! You never told me that it was going to make her disappear!"

"Bring her memory back? What are you rambling about?…Oh wait…" The Master suddenly remembered his little parting gift. "The Timewarp sisters…You gave her that silver earring." He muttered, feeling his insides turn when he noticed the anxious look that appeared on the Doctor's face while he followed his side of the conversation.

"That cursed thing, she wore it on her wedding day and now she's gone!" Wilf cried. "Where is my granddaughter! What have you done to her? Tell me you swine!"

"I have done nothing! Don't blame me for your misfortunes, you crazy old loon!" The Master yelled back through the speaker. The Doctor leaped forward and pulled the cell-phone out of his hand. "That chameleon device was a real treasure." The Master pointed out to him, visibly annoyed. "I knew I should have kept it for myself instead of wasting it on these ungrateful biped apes!"

"You let Wilf hand over a powerful alien device to an Earth woman in full hibernation of a meta-crisis? What are you thinking? Are you insane?" The Doctor shouted back at him.

"_He_ wanted it!" The Master yelled in a fit of self-righteous anger, waving his arms wildly. "He was all crying about how sad it was that his precious little Donna would never regain her memory of you again. I just gave him the chance to set things right. Why the hell is everybody now blaming me for?"

It was the clear frustration on the Master's face that convinced the Doctor that he was speaking the truth. "Wilf." The Doctor spoke as calmly as possible through the line, while giving the Master a lingering, disapproving look. "It's me, tell me what's going on."

"Oh Doctor! I am so glad to hear your voice!" Wilf sighed. "It's Donna. She has disappeared again, right on her wedding day. Oh and they say things never happen the same way twice!" He sadly shook his head. "She was standing there, right at the altar next to Shaun when that chameleon thing started to glow. Then the light became really bright, like the sun had come up inside the church. We couldn't see a thing. When it finally faded, Donna was gone…she was…she was sort of replaced."

"What do you mean...replaced?" The Doctor asked.

"Well instead of Donna, another girl, I think it was a blond, was standing on her spot. She was wearing Donna's wedding dress and shoes everything. I thought that it was because the chameleon device had finally worked, so I ran up to take care of her because she seemed confused and scared. She was even running away from Shaun. I caught her and looked her right in the eyes. She wasn't Donna. She was really someone else." Wilf voice broke. "Doctor, you've got to help us."

"And I will." The Doctor reassured him. "I will help you, but first you have to calm down and tell me where you are."

"Oh…Um, I'm in the holy church of the Sacred Hearts in London."

"Right!" The doctor rushed over to the keyboard and started typing the new coordinates. "And what day is it?"

"It's April the 25th, around 12 o'clock in the early afternoon." Wilf answered hurriedly.

"April the 25th, 2011." The Doctor muttered while he typed in the date. His skinny fingers danced over the strange arrays and dials. "Oh that's a beautiful day to get married. Beautiful. Plenty of sunshine with hardly a cloud in the sky. Donna should be thrilled." He smiled, trying to keep the old man's spirit up.

"Oh she was." Wilf said, and a sad little smile crossed his lips. "I wanted to invite you, but I didn't know how to send out the invitation and Silvia kept nagging about how dangerous it would be to have you here." Wilf paused and bit on his lower lip. "I'm sorry. You should have been here. If you were here today, nothing awful would have happened to her."

"Don't worry Wilf." The Doctor replied. "We're coming right now. Stay where you are and wait for us. We will bring her back, I promise."

And with that last message, the phone line went dead.

**8.**

Wilf slipped his cell-phone back inside his breast-pocket. An awful feeling was still playing up inside his stomach, but at least he was reassured that help was on the way. He went outside, ignoring the confused family members and friends who had left their seats and were standing around in the aisle, filling the church with worried whispers. Out in the garden, he passed by a couple of Donna's friends grouped around Nerys who were busy smoking a fag while gossiping. He greeted them hastily, and went around the corner where an old hedge obscured him from their view. There he waited, assuming that this would be a perfect spot for the Tardis to land, and felt a wave of relief wash over him when he finally picked up the gruff, rasping sound of the Tardis engines.

The blue doors flew open and the Doctor rushed out first. "Wilf! Where is the blond girl you mentioned?"

"Oh Doctor, finally! She's not here! She ran away as soon as she had the chance." Wilf's eyes narrowed with hostility when he saw the Master appear behind the Doctor. "Oh you've got nerves to show up here! After all that you've done!"

The Master was about to say something really unpleasant to the old man when the Doctor was luckily a little bit quicker with his reply. "He has nothing to do with it. Believe me. You shouldn't blame him." He explained.

"But he gave me that Timewasp thing! It made Donna disappear!" Wilf objected.

"For the record, that was a perfectly working chameleon device to help her unlock her memories. It would have absorbed the excess energy from the Timelord meta-crisis once she started remembering her old self, not make her disappear into thin air, you senile old fool!" The Master pointed out aggressively.

"You're absolutely right. It shouldn't make her disappear…unless." The Doctor paused and gave the Master a pensive look.

"Unless…it was used a link." The Master guessed.

The Doctor slapped his forehead. "Of course! Someone must have tapped into that energy release from the meta-crisis to establish a two-way connection. And coming from a full-blown Timelord meta-crisis, that's a _huge_ amount of energy! You could do anything with that!" He suddenly stopped with his ramblings when he realized the dreadful truth. "Donna could be anywhere." He muttered. "She could be on the other side of the galaxy! She could even be dragged through the timevortex into another century!" The Doctor paused, realizing that he wasn't exactly putting poor Wilf at ease with his mad guesses.

"If you are still wondering what he's babbling about, it means that your Donna is pretty much screwed." The Master said to Wilf with a vindictive little smile.

"Shut up you." The Doctor told the Master in an annoyed voice. "Wilf, don't listen to him. Don't worry. It doesn't mean that we can't get her back." he put his hands on his shoulders and stared Wilf in the eyes. "Take us where you last saw her."

Wilf led them inside the church and pointed out an empty spot in front of the altar. The Doctor knelt down to examine it more closely. He ran with his finger over the floor, and rubbed the dirt between his fingers while he sniffed thoughtfully. "Smells like the ocean after a thunderstorm, which mean it must be subatomic static." The Doctor mumbled. The Master reacted slightly nauseated when the Doctor put his dust-covered finger in his mouth. "Oh please, is that necessary? That can be never very hygienic."

"What is it Doctor?" Wilf asked with much concern.

"I think it's time dust." The Doctor sucked on his tongue to get a better taste of it. "Whenever time is disturbed, for example when something or someone is forced or pushed through a breach, you get a trail of these tiny subnano particles, sort of breadcrumbs of time, left behind where the rift has been after it was closed. They are sucked in by the vacuum that was created by the transfer."

"Subnano-what? I can't really follow you." Wilf muttered in complete confusion.

The Doctor was about to explain it to Wilf in elaborate but more simple terms when the Master rudely interrupted him. "Oh never mind that." The Master said. "They're useless. We can't track her down using only this. We need the original link. We need the chameleon device."

The Doctor turned to Wilf. "You said the blond was wearing Donna's clothes?"

"Yes she did." Wilf's face lit up in panic when he realized. "You think she still got the earring?"

"We need it back. Only then we will be able to find out where Donna went. Wilf, how long ago did the blond girl leave the church?"

"I dunno." Wilf shrugged nervously. "I called you as soon after she did a runner. A good ten minutes perhaps?"

The Doctor started rushing back. "Which way did she go?"

"She went through the frontgarden and turned left at the corner of the street."

"Right, I am going after her. A young girl dressed in a wedding gown running down the busy streets of London in the middle of the day, shouldn't be so difficult to find. You." He pointed deliberately at the Master who was already heading for the exit with him. "You're not coming with me. You stay here with Wilf."

"What? Stay here and babysit the old and the senile?" The Master scoffed.

"I need you to keep an eye on the rift." The Doctor replied.

"But it's closed up. Nothing's going to happen to it!"

"Just do it. And don't, and I mean _Don't_ frighten any of these people in here." The Doctor told him firmly, wagging his finger at him. "Don't insult them, don't go poking inside their heads, nothing, nuffink, nada, understand? It's enough chaos already. We don't need more problems to complicate things."

"Fine." The Master muttered grudgingly. "I'll just talk pleasantly to them then."

"Oh, no you don't! Don't say a word to them." The Doctor said hurriedly, remembering how wrong that went in the London Library. "Just stand there and don't do anything." He added, before he swirled around and went in pursuit of the fugitive.

"Why don't I just stop breathing as well?" The Master shouted after him, but the Doctor was already gone.

"That selfish git. He always gets all the fun." The Master grumbled, crossing his arms over his chest before he turned to Wilf. From the corners of his eyes, he caught sight of Shaun and watched with amusement how the unlucky groom was still on the phone trying to talk to the police to convince them to go look for Donna while his kind and supportive parents tried their best to put the worried wedding guests at ease. "I must say granddad, this party is pretty dead." The Master remarked with a little grin, just to stir up trouble.

Wilf shook his head exasperatedly. "Oh I can't believe I felt sorry for you and gave you my phone."

"At least you did one thing right." The Master replied and clapped in his hands. "Right. When is the bar open? I swear I could _murder _someone for a drink."

Wilf looked at him, astonished. "We don't have a bar in here. This is a church ceremony. Aren't you supposed to keep an eye on the rift?"

"Well it's not going anywhere, is it?" The Master said sourly. "And why isn't there a bar in here? How can you not serve any drinks on a wedding? Were you on a really tight budget or something?"

Before Wilf could open his mouth to tell him what an incredible selfish prick he was, Sylvia came over to them to have an urgent talk with her dad.

"Dad, was that the Doctor? I thought I saw him, just a minute ago."

"Yes. Yes it was the Doctor. I gave him call. He's here to help us find Donna." Her father explained.

"Oh you shouldn't have done that!" Sylvia's exclaimed with a most disapproving look. "He can't turn up at the wedding. What if Donna sees him!"

"Well she is not exactly here, is she?" The Master noted, rolling his eyes at so much idiocy.

Sylvia finally noticed the strange man standing next to Wilf. "Who is this?" She asked, pulling a face as if she had just encountered something very unpleasant.

"Oh…um, that's someone the Doctor brought along. A friend of some sort." Wilf tried to explain rather reluctantly.

"He…looks _very_ familiar." Sylvia muttered warily. There was something peculiar about him that her memories could not quite place, _yet_.

"What's that you're holding?" Wilf asked, pointing at the crumbled lace that she had in her hands.

"Oh, this. It came from that blond trollop. I pulled it from her head when I tried to stop her from running away. It's her wedding veil. Actually, it's Donna's wedding veil. Everything she wore was Donna's." Sylvia added with a sharp, bitter tune in her voice. "Oh, I still remember her getting all excited about picking out this floral pattern, and she adored these little pearls." She said, taking in a deep breath. Whatever other people might think of her. Sylvia was a strong woman. She didn't do drama. It was just not in her character, and in times like these all she could do was transform all her worries and grief into a kind of annoyed anger. "I just hated watching that imposter walk away with my daughter's wedding dress!" She stated with pain in her heart.

Wilf put a hand on her shoulder. "Don't worry Sylvia. She's going to come back."

"There is blood on it." The Master remarked.

Wilf and Sylvia looked at him with puzzled looks on their faces.

The Master sighed, once again agitated by the very slowness of the minds of these human apes. "On the veil. There's a blood stain on the veil." Without asking, he snatched the veil out of Sylvia's hand and held up a fold that showed a small patch of red the size of a coin. "Our mystery blond is bleeding. How come?"

"Well, I don't know. Don't look at me like that! I didn't hurt her or anything. I was just trying to stop her from running away." Sylvia said defensively.

"I think you may have made a nasty cut in her earlobe." The Master noted with a glint in his eyes, unhooking the small glistening object from the bundle of fabric. He held it up against the light. "Oh look at what we have here." He muttered, delighted by his finding.

"That's not Donna's" Sylvia commented, furrowing her brows.

Wilf came closer to study it. "What is that…a pearl earring?"

"That's not a pearl. I thought you might recognize it. You've certainly seen it before." The Master glanced sideways at Wilf. "It's a Timewarp cocoon." He revealed.

"What…you mean the same ones that those Roman witches had in Ephesus?"

"What do you know, that's a correct guess. You're not so dim after all." The Master replied with a wide grin, and spun the trinket in the air before catching it and putting it away. "Come on granddad, let's get out of here. Or do you want to stay put to sulk and moan with the rest of the graying herd?"

"Where are you going?" Wilf asked, alarmed when he saw him heading for the door.

The Master was already half-way down the aisle, but turned around. "I'm going after Nerd-boy. I'm finished here."

"But, the Doctor told us to wait here and keep an eye on that rift thing."

"What are you, his obedient dog?" The Master scoffed. "It's closed and dead. Meaning it's not going to be activated any time soon. Besides, we've got what we wanted. There is no use to stay here and get bored, unless you really want me to get more acquainted with your lovely family." He added with a grin. Coming from the Master, it was more like a threat than a friendly proposal. It certainly convinced Wilf.

"Where are you going dad?" Sylvia exclaimed, amazed when she saw her dad going after the Timelord. "Don't follow him. Have you lost your mind? Whatever the Doctor is doing right now, it's bound to be dangerous. On your age, you should think of your health!"

"Huh, if you think I'm old, you should check his birth certificate." Wilf half-joked.

"Don't go!" Sylvia stamped her feet on the floor. "I forbid it! Do you hear me dad?"

But as was often the case with Sylvia's aggressive way of communication, the louder she shouted, the faster Wilf and the Master were getting the hell away from her.

**_TBC_**

Please review and respond, It keeps me motivated to carry on writing!


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2**

**1**

The outside world had become a most confusing place for Anne. She was used to the busy streets of 16th and 18th century London, packed with pedestrians from all walks of life, sedan chairs, and horse-drawn carriages, and the smell of horse manure and wet straw on the road. But now, the city was swamped by a terrifying tide of traffic that filled the streets with a horrible noise and suffocating chemical fumes. Colorful vehicles zoomed by without any visible aid of horses, while the people sitting inside the weird shiny cocoons seemed at ease to travel at such a deadly speed without even a driver on the perch. More than once, Anne had attempted to cross the road, but finally didn't risked it, for every time she found a gap in the oncoming traffic, new metal monsters on wheels would suddenly appear. The most puzzling thing to her was that it seemed that no-one else was trying get to the other side. The crowd seemed to be perfectly content to walk on the same side as long as the streets were lined by shops.

"Hey, where are you going sweetheart?" A shaggy-looking man who had deliberately bumped into her asked. "Why are you wearing that dress?" His breath smelled of cheap alcohol when he belched in he face and she went out of his way as quickly as possible. "Hey I was talking to you! What are you? Late for Cinderella's ball? Are you dating prince Charming or what?"

She ignored his offensive calls, waving through the crowd just to get rid of him. Everywhere she went, people were turning their heads and staring at her. _I have to get out of this dress, s_he thought. It was drawing too much attention, although it probably would have been worse if she had appeared in her execution gown, strapped in her bee-waste corset, and dressed like a French aristocrat who had fallen on hard times. Most of the women she saw in the streets were actually wearing what seemed to be riding trousers, and were dressed far more plainly than she was used to in fashionable 18th century France. How times had changed, she pondered. It wasn't until she heard the Doctor's voice rising above the racket of the traffic that she realized that she was being followed.

"Hey, the blond girl in the wedding dress. Please, stop running!"

She glanced over her shoulder, and saw a tall man in a long flapping coat, with spiked and scruffy hair and wild inquisitive eyes, flexing like a fish through the dense crowd to get to her. "Stop! The Doctor shouted. "Don't run!"

Needless to say that it didn't help. Spooked, Anne picked up her dress and ran even faster, her inch high heels barely touched the pavement while she pushed through the crowd with renewed boldness.

"Stop!" The Doctor repeated, noticing with great worry that she was getting away. How on earth that girl could run so fast on those impossible heels was beyond him. "Please stop! I am not going to hurt you! I just want to talk!" He tried.

But Anne didn't listen and kept fleeing from him in a white blur of lace. She was in such a state of panic that she carelessly jumped on the road once the cars had stopped in front of a red traffic light. She started meandering through the lanes of cars, but didn't make it to the other side in time. The lights turned green again and the traffic started to move, trapping her right in the middle of road. Anne swirled around, frightened like a deer caught in the headlights, while passing drivers hooted their horns at her to get the crazy bride out of the way. The Doctor was alarmed by a yellow sports car that turned around the corner. The driver's view of the girl was completely blocked by a large van parked nearby, and the roaring engines didn't make any effort to lower speed. By the time the driver did see her, it was already impossible for him to evade her.

Anne's breath stalled when she watched the bright yellow vehicle race towards her, the face of the driver that became visible through the front window was mirroring her own in horror, when a quick strong push in her back made her tumble forward. She heard a dull bump when her head hit the asphalt, followed by a mad whirlwind of screeching tires and the horrible noise of crashing metal and splintering glass.

Dazed by the blow, and feeling hot and heady like after she had too much wine, Anne scrambled up and dared to look around. An entire lane had come to a complete standstill, while a group of cars directly behind her had bumped into each other, causing considerable damage. She slowly staggered back on her feet. A small head wound dripped beads of blood into her left eye and colored her world in a red haze. On the road, right in front of her, lying on his side with his long coat rolled up around his torso and with his silver tie hanging over his face, was the strange man who had been following after her. A pool of crimson slowly spread underneath his spiky strands of hair. Anne stepped back in shock, just when a short bloke stepped out of the yellow racecar. His hair was thinning and he wore a fashionable T-shirt that greeted the outside world with the cheerful message _Hi gorgeous. Meet the EX-man!_ Visible shaken by the accident, his pasty white face had entered yet another category of pale. "Is he alright?" He asked Anne in a small, unnerved voice.

"I…I don't know. I don't even know who he is." She clutched her forehead in confusion. "Why did he do this?" She muttered, realizing that the Doctor had just pushed her out of harm's way.

"You mean you don't know him?" The man asked, finding this difficult to believe. "But that fellow jumped right in front of me to save your life!

Anne shook her head wildly. "I'm sorry, but I have to go." She wanted to turn away, but the reluctant driver grabbed on to her.

"Please sir." Anne begged him. "This has nothing to do with me."

"You can't just go." The man told her, convinced she needed help. "You need to go the hospital. Both of you. You're probably in shock. Stay here and let me call an ambulance."

"I don't need to be seen by a physician. I am not injured! Let me go –" She stopped struggling when she saw a unusual wooden structure move through the lanes of stagnant traffic. A closed carriage, polished to a mirror-shine and as black as midnight, moved towards them, drawn by a four span of magnificent black horses. Her anxious heart felt a great wave of relief when she recognized the emblem engraved in gold on the door panels on the side. It was the symbol of alpha and omega merged into one, the sacred sign of the Watcher's order. They had finally come to collect her and bring her back home.

"What's going?" The little man from the sports car muttered, his grip on Anne weakened when he saw how fast the carriage was approaching. "Hey!" He let go of her and waved at the driver, frantically trying to warn him. "Hey! Keep out of the way! Can't you see that there has been an accident? Someone is seriously injured here!"

But instead of turning away or slowing down, the carriage actually increased speed, and kept heading straight forward. The man panicked and jumped aside, leaving Anne in the direct path of the four galloping horses. Just when she could feel the thunder of their hooves move the ground underneath her feet and vibrate up into her chest, the carriage made a sharp turn to the left. With a firm, strong grip, the driver pulled in the reigns, and the horses reared up high, causing the vehicle to come to an abrupt full stop. The door of the cabin slammed open and a man dressed in an 18th century horseman's outfit appeared, took off his hat and turned his face to the light. Anne sighed deeply when she recognized the scar running over his left eye.

"Thank God, Antoine!" She embraced the horseman tightly and kissed his cheeks. "I feared you wouldn't come."

"My sincere apologies milady. Our mistress made a slight miscalculation on the timing of the gap. Let's just say that we left on time, but arrived too late." He said with a little smile that quickly vanished when he noticed the blood on her face. You're injured." He said with great concern. Anne shook her head. "It's nothing serious." She reassured him in a soft voice.

"Why is she still standing there?" Another man shouted from inside the carriage, clearly impatient to get things going. "Get her on the coach! The next gap is in less than 11 minutes. We cannot afford to miss it."

Anne climbed inside the black carriage and took a seat near the window. Before she could take a last look outside, the man next to her pulled the drapes shut in front of her nose. "Did you get it?" He asked, narrowing his eyes. He wouldn't think twice of throwing her out in the streets again if she had not fulfilled her task, but Anne nodded and instinctively closed her hand around the silver locker near her heart. "Here." He told her, handing over a copper chain with a silver amulet attached. "Remember to wear the hook close to the skin, or the jump might not work for you."

Anne was still busy strapping the chain around her ankle when the carriage rocked on its springs. Antoine reappeared, and pulled the body of the Doctor inside the passenger compartment, while the driver stood on the footplate and helped with the Doctor's legs.

"What are you doing?" She asked, her green eyes wide. "That's the man who's been following me around. Why are you taking him?"

"Sorry milady." Antoine puffed, lowering the Doctor down on the floor between the seats. "We were told to bring back a tall, dark-haired man who crosses his path with our lady Anne. He fits the descriptions." Antoine crouched down and quickly fastened another set of copper chains around the Doctor's left ankle. "I'm just following the Watcher's orders."

"But he's dead. You'll be dragging along a corpse." Anne objected fiercely. Somehow, the idea of bringing this stranger back with them to the 18th century stirred up great worries inside her heart. She wasn't a superstitious woman, but she couldn't help to see the sudden appearance of this peculiar man as a bad omen, particularly when his presence here was actually predicted by the Watcher. "The jump wouldn't work for him. It does not transfer things without a life's light inside." She tried.

"He's not quite dead. At least not yet." Antoine answered, and demonstrated it by poking a heavy elbow in the Doctor's ribcage. The Timelord reflexively gasped in pain and surprise, but otherwise his eyes remained shut. Anne, freaked out by the sight, moved further away from their unconscious prisoner.

"That's enough Henri." Antoine told the driver. "Get us going. We'll tie him up when we are back after we make the jump." He shut the door and plopped down in the passenger seat opposite to Anne. Outside, the driver climbed on the box and with a snap of the reins to stir the horses, the carriage began to move.

**2****.**

"I'm not so sure this is such a good idea anymore." Wilf muttered, clutching his chest to check if he was about to have a heart attack or not. They had been running for at least 15 minutes with the Master pushing onward with the determination of a bloodhound hot on the Doctor's trail. Now they had finally reached the end of the street and there was still no sign of the other Timelord or the mysterious blond. Wilf was exhausted, for unlike the Doctor, the Master wasn't the least considerate of his human companion and wasn't trying to lower his pace to allow him to catch up with him. "Are you sure you have any idea where he went?" Wilf huffed, bending over with his hands resting on his knees.

The Master tapped his nose knowingly. "I can still smell him." He replied, and stuck his nose in the air and sniffed. "That way." He told Wilf and bolted in the pointed out direction.

"Oh right. Did anyone ever tell you lads that this is kind of disturbing?" Wilf commented, trying hard to keep up with him again. They reached the part of the road where Anne had just caused havoc among the 21st century London car-drivers. "What's going on here?" Wilf asked, noticing the car-wrecks and the traffic jam, which seemed to be caused by a short bloke with a receding hairline, who was busy pushing a sports car the color of a cartoon lemon to the side of the road.

"Yeah, yeah, I heard you! I'm working on it!" The man shouted over his shoulder, while the long line of waiting cars behind him kept honking impatiently. "I'm getting out of the way as quickly as possible!"

"Looks like an accident. Luckily nobody seems to be injured." Wilf noted, but the Master wasn't so sure. With a strange resolute expression on face, he went over to owner of the defunct car to have a word.

"Did you see a tall man in a striped brown suit running after a blond girl in a wedding dress?" He asked in a very direct manner. Wilf thought this was a rather peculiar thing to do. The man obviously had other things on his mind than to keep an eye out for run-away brides bolting through the streets, but to the old man's surprise, the owner of the yellow sports car started to nod fervently. "Oh yeah. I did. Him and that crazy blond you mean."

"What happened?" The Master asked impatiently.

"Well, she stood right in the middle of the bloody road, didn't she?" He answered, as his guilt had turned into misplaced anger. "I almost ran her over because I didn't see her. I couldn't have seen her. No-body could have seen her coming from that corner." Wilf noticed how the dignified fury on the man's face was quickly fading away as he addressed the Master, who kept staring at him, his dark eyes unblinking and his own expression set in stone. "I…I didn't see him" The man apologized. "It wasn't my fault I swea -" The rest of the sentence died in the man's throat, and sweat started to trickle down his fat neck. Suddenly, he felt like he was burning up with his heart racing inside his chest. It was those cursed eyes. It was like staring into the narrow slits of a hissing asp, right before it sunk its fangs into your face.

He-he came out of the blue. Just jumped right in front of me. I couldn't stop…I just couldn't stop." The man rambled.

The Master took his icy gaze from the whimpering man and crouched next to the ominous stain that spread beneath the tires. He dipped two fingers in the sticky red liquid, brought it to his nose, and breathed in the coppery scent.

"Um. Let me get my car out of the way." The man muttered, snapping out of what was a very terrifying experience. He was about to turn away from the strange man when a nasty blow struck him on the side of the head and send him reeling back till he smashed into the bonnet of his own vehicle. He had just enough time to spin around before a second blow hit his stomach. It made him curl up in pain and sink through his shaking knees. As the Master crouched beside him, he gazed up at the Timelord with absolute terror. "Keys." The Master whispered threateningly. Needless to say, the man didn't need to think twice to hand it over to him.

"What are you doing!" Said Wilf, absolutely shocked by what he had just witnessed. "What, you're molesting people and stealing cars now?"

The Master opened the yellow cardoor and jumped into the driver's seat. "Get in granddad! They're getting away." He barked at Wilf.

"What are you talking about? Who are getting away?"

"The men who have taken the Doctor and the girl." Said the Master. He had been extracting all what he needed to know, directly out of the man's memories. "They're on a black carriage, heading south."

"He didn't say a word about a seeing a carriage."

"Look, it doesn't matter! Hurry up or we'll lose them!" The Master shouted back, his eyes suddenly wild and menacing. Unlike the Doctor, he didn't find any satisfaction, nor feel the urge to explain his every move to Wilf. He turned the key and with one quick swipe of the laserscrewdriver over the dashboard, the five-cylinder engine came roaring back to life.

Wilf looked down at the injured man with guilt written all over his face. "I'm sorry but I think we have to borrow your car." Wilf apologized, hastily stepping over him. "I promise we'll bring it back." He added as a comforting note, before he took the passenger seat next to Master.

"No we're not." The Master stated firmly, glancing over his shoulder, he spun the car around.

Wilf was still struggling to fasten his seatbelt when the Master drove the car backwards up the sidewalk, sending the pedestrians fleeing left and right behind them, while he struggled to keep the monster car under control. Wilf felt a sudden pang of panic. "Do you actually know how to drive?" He asked. His old heart leaped up his throat when the wheels bumped back onto the road with a nasty thud that sent them both lurching forward.

"I had a personal chauffeur when I was prime minister." The Master shrugged, stepping on the gas as soon as the front wheels hit the asphalt. "I've watched him often enough to know how _not_ to drive." He returned to Wilf a most maniacal grin.

"All right, that's it, we're done for." Wilf mumbled fearfully.

**3.**

Not far away from the Master and Wilf, the black carriage was moving through the heavy London traffic on a much slower pace than the passengers onboard would prefer. While Antoine kept an eye on their prisoner, who had started to stir and moan as he rolled over the carriage floor, he also kept glancing down at his fobwatch. The dials were coming alarmingly close to midday, and they still needed to drive all the way around the city's grand park to get to their destination.

He stuck his head out of the window. "Can't we go any faster?" He yelled out at the driver, who shook his head worriedly in return. Henri was right. They couldn't possible go any faster, for the four-lane road was packed with traffic in both directions, and the four-span was caught right in the middle of it. The horses were forced to trot along on a slow pace. There wasn't even room for the carriage to turn.

"We can't go on like this. We only have minutes left before the gap appears." Antoine glanced at the sidewalk where in the distance, the iron gates that marked the entrance of Regent Park slowly became visible. "Take a shortcut." He ordered, slapping the side of the carriage with the flat of his hand. "Move to the left and go through the parklands."

The driver tipped his hat and started to maneuver the four-span into a narrow gap between two double-decker busses.

Meanwhile, the Master was getting very close, steering the yellow racecar down the lanes like a madman and swirling between the other vehicles with breathtaking speed. Wilf held on to his seat while he watched with sheer dread how the Master managed to swirl pass and dodge each of the cars he was overtaking with all the confidence and daredevil tactics of a cocky teenager racing on a Nintendo game-consol.

"There it is!" The Master pointed out a black coach at the other end of road. It was pinned between two lanes as it as tried to move to the left. "That's who we are after." And as if to underline his point, he flattened the foot-pedal and the car accelerated with a predatory roar.

Wilf felt his heart beat in his throat. "There's traffic all around us. You can't drive through all those cars to get there, you maniac!"

The Master wasn't planning to. He spun around and swept the vehicle off the road and onto the sidewalk again. Fully ignoring Wilf's very vocal objections, he raced down the busy high street while hooting constantly to get these thick and stupid pedestrians out of his way.

"There's something strange going on." Henri reported to Antoine. He showed him the fast driving vehicle racing over the sidewalk behind them. It cut through the crowd like a scythe would cut through a field of wheat.

Anne stuck her head out of the window to look back. She wasn't too happy when she recognized the yellow racecar. "That's the horseless carriage that almost ran me over! It's following us!"

"Get off this road, now!" Antoine ordered.

"Oh my God!" Wilf shouted when they barely missed a young mother, who was just in time to push her baby-trolley out of way. "I'm really sorry mam!" Wilf shouted back through the open side-window, and was quite surprised when the young lady stuck up her middle finger at him. "Women these days." The Master grinned at the sight in his rearview mirror. "No sophistication or grace whatsoever. Makes you yearn for the good old days, when they still knew how to behave well to please a man, and generally knew when the heck to shut up."

"You're a real pig, you know that?" Wilf told him. He didn't care what he said to him anymore, even if he was a dangerous homicidal alien. If they were bound to die in some horrible car accident, he better get all this off his chest anyway.

The Master just laughed, his eyes wild with excitement. With one quick movement, he changed gears and spun the wheel, heading through the iron gates that welcomed visitors into the green tranquility of Regent Park.

"They're gaining on us! Speed up the horses!" Antoine barked. The driver cracked his whip on the backs of the four-span and the horses went from a firm gait into a full gallop, scaring recreational bikers and kids on roller-skates right off the road.

"Watch out for that ice-cream van!" Wilf shouted.

The Master flung the car aside just in time to evade a whole bunch of kiddies who were waiting in line to get their ice-cream fix.

"Watch out for that tree!" Wilf yelled, and the Master swung the wheel to the other side to get the car back on the road instead of ramming it into the trunk of a very sturdy and unforgiving looking oak.

"Watch out for that dog!" Wilf exclaimed, pointing at the trembling cotton ball on four legs standing in the middle of road and was now impossible for the car _not_ to hit.

"Screw the dog." The Master muttered under his breath, and drove right over it.

"You bastard!" Wilf screamed in ears. "You killed the dog!"

"It was a bloody poodle!" The Master yelled back. "Technically speaking, that's not even a real dog, but more a genetic accident." He added vindictively, and stepped on the accelerator, making the yellow car disappear in a cloud of dust.

"God heavens! It's faster than the devil on wings!" Henri exclaimed, witnessing with great worry how the yellow monster continued to swallow the distance between them. "We can't outrun it!"

"Get off! Get off the road!" Antoine ordered. "Take a shortcut! Drive the horses over the lawn!" He checked his fobwatch. "Quickly, there's not much time left!"

"Watch out for tha-" Wilf started.

"Would you just shut the bloody hell up!" The Master screamed. "I swear, you're driving me absolutely INSANE!" He spun the wheel around, and the car whirled like mad merry-go-round from hell, causing Wilf to grab onto his seatbelt for dear life.

"What are you doing, you madman?" Wilf yelled, while all of the blood ran from his face down into his toes.

"If they're taking a shortcut-" The Master answered determinedly. "So are we!"

He drove the car up the lawn, tires screeching and belching up dirt and grass in its wake.

"Get out of the way!" The Master screamed, hooting the car-horn at those lazy humans, who were, until very recently, enjoying themselves by having their picnics and wasting their time with a game of football, but were now fleeing for their lives. "Get off this lawn! Get out of my bloody way!"

Black smoke started to rise up from the bonnet while the Master struggled to keep his control over the slippery underground. Even worse, he had to lower his speed at several occasions because those stupid humans just didn't seem to be capable to move away fast enough. It gave the horses an advantage.

"It's slowing down! Keep going over the grass!" Antoine told Henri. The carriage kept heading southwards till they reached a narrow lane that was lined by tall trees and hedges on both sides. Henri drew a sigh of relief and drove the horses down the long green tunnel without reducing speed. "How long do we have left?" Anne asked, glancing nervously out of the window while a wall of leaves rushed by.

"One minute and 33 seconds." Antoine answered. "We're almost there milady."

"Is that devil's chariot still following us?" Anne was just taking a glimpse when the shiny monster appeared at the beginning of the tunnel, its back slipping dangerously close to the side of the narrow road, before the Master managed to regain his control over the wheel.

"Keep heading to the portal Henri!" Antoine told the driver. Aware that they were now out of the public eye, he grabbed hold of his musket gun.

"That's a bit strange to go hide out here in this narrow tunnel when you're getting chased." Wilf muttered.

"Oh they're trapped all right." The Master remarked with a predatory grin. "Let's take a better look at our fugitives, shall we?" He speeded up the car till it came only inches away from the back of the black carriage. The driver glanced over his shoulder nervously, but kept driving the horses onwards. Irritated that they just wouldn't stop, the Master rammed his bumper into the back of the carriage, and it jolted forward violently, causing the horses to rear and whinny in fright. The Master was about to repeat this move again when a man with one scarred eye appeared at the cabin-window, pointed the barrel of a musket at him and fired a shot. On reflex, the Master swung the car to the side, and the round bullet that was little more than a badly shaped metal ball the size of a marble, propelled through the front-window and pierced a hole though the metal frame at the driver's side.

"Holy Jesus! They're shooting at us!" Wilf exclaimed.

"Really? Those evil bastards." The Master deadpanned, hardly interested to mock Wilf's keen observation any further. He was more worried about the fact that scar-face was already preparing for a second shot.

"Did you get him?" Anne asked worriedly.

"Almost." Antoine replied while he loaded his gun with fresh gunpowder. "Prepare yourself for the jump lady Anne." He lowered the barrel of his musket on the windowsill to improve his aim at the two figures behind the front window of the tagging car. "Let me take care of our unwanted guests." He mumbled.

"Oh no you don't!" The Doctor was still lying on his back on the floor of the cabin, but with one well-aimed swoop of his flexible leg he kicked the barrel from the wooden frame. Anne shrieked when the shot was fired in the air and the bullet punched a hole in the ceiling of the carriage.

"What's going on?" Wilf had clearly heard the sound of a gunshot. "Are we hit?"

Before the Master could answer him, two lights descended from the skies and swooped down over the black carriage. They started to spin in helical loops, weaving around the wooden structure till they swallowed it entirely in a cocoon of dazzling white light.

"Oh my God." Wilf muttered. "It's happening again."

It may have been a trick of the eye, but for a moment, the entire carriage seemed to turn white, including the galloping horses. A flash of crackling energy exploded in front of the horse-drawn vehicle. It rushed over the four-span and the carriage and jumped over on the yellow racecar. The Master's breath stalled when the current hit him, lashing from the steering wheel onto his arms, numbing his reflexes and freezing every cell inside his body until its very molecular core, before it left his body again, leaving only a nasty metal tang in his mouth.

"Master!" Wilf shouted. "Watch out!"

He immediately snapped out of his trance and stepped full on the brakes, but couldn't stop the car from slamming head on into the back of the carriage. The master had just enough time to cover his face when the wooden backside of the cabin crashed into the front window, fragmenting it into a huge blooming spider-web while large wooden splinters stabbed into the dashboard. He felt a hot slash over the back of his arm, and heard Wilf scream his lungs out. A violent thud followed before the vehicle jolted to a full stop.

"Oh my God." Wilf opened his eyes to the alarmingly sharp end of a wooden beam, sticking only inches away from his face. "Oh my God." He kept muttering, while he patted down his chest to check on any lethal punctures. He called himself very lucky when he couldn't find any.

"Oh my…you're…you're bleeding." Wilf noted, he stared white rimmed at the Master, who was a most horrid sight with his right sleeve soaked in blood. "You're bleeding quite a lot!"

But the Master hardly heard Wilf. His mind was too occupied by the very obvious that seemed to have completely eluded the gentle old man. Ignoring Wilf's concerned ramblings, he struggled out of the car.

The black carriage had come to a complete standstill.

There was no noise except for the quiet tapping of the cooling engine and the heavy breathing of the exhausted horses blowing bursts of hot air out of their nostrils. In the nearby woodlands, a hidden bird chirped happily in the afternoon sun.

Still transfixed, the Master gazed at the partially destroyed carriage with a look of incredulity on his face. He didn't even notice that he left a trail of blood on the woodland floor. "Why did we stop so suddenly?" He mumbled, and while Wilf slowly and carefully worked himself free from behind the ruined dashboard, he stumbled over to the black carriage to take a closer look.

"Hey! What are you doing? Get away from there!" Wilf whispered urgently, fearing that the wounded Timelord had lost his marbles because he was in shock. "They were shooting at us just a minute ago, remember?" But the Master waved his worries away. "The driver is gone, didn't you notice?" He shouted back, and forced open one of the cabin-doors. When he stuck his head inside, Wilf could hardly watch as he half-expected to hear a gunshot that would blow out the Master's brains in a spray of crimson, but instead of this morbid spectacle, the Master climbed on board unhindered.

The dark claustrophobic place was littered with weapons and clothes. Two handhold muskets were lying ready near the window, while a carton box with gunpowder and ammunition was shoved underneath the seats. He also found two strange-looking contraptions, copper belts with well-crafted medallions attached. The symbol etched into the façade was hauntingly familiar, showing alpha and omega, merged in a triangle. The very sight of it made the Master's stomach tighten. His instincts pulled him to the most worrisome sights in the cabin, the heaps of clothes that were tossed on the seats and floor. On the window-seat, he found a cloud of lace and white synthetic fabric. A woman's wedding dress. When he went through it, he recovered an earring, a silver necklace, and all the way down at the bottom of the heap, a pair of white slippers adorned with pink roses. No sign of the bride. No sign of anybody. It was as if they had all gone up in thin smoke, leaving only their possessions behind. His apprehension awakened, he tossed the woman's shoes back on the pile, and almost stumbled over the Doctor's trainers. When he crouched down and looked underneath the seats, he found his companion's striped brown trousers and suit, with the Doctor's underwear and white shirt still tangled up inside. The Master went through the pockets, and retrieved the Doctor's fobwatch, sonic screwdriver, and nerdy black-rimmed glasses, and carefully put them away, knowing how much his companion valued them. He also fished out the Tardis keys from the Doctor's coat. Before he headed out, he noticed the tiny particles that drifted inside the cabin and slowly covered the interior with a silver blanket of dust. Like the Doctor had done before, he ran his finger over the windowsill and dabbed it on the tip of his tongue, tasting it pensively.

Wilf was waiting for him when he headed back outside. "And?" The old man asked with a worried expression on his face.

The Master put the keys away. "They're gone." He said in a solemn voice.

"What? What do you mean?" Wilf peered inside the empty cabin. Although he was fully aware of what he saw, he couldn't believe his own eyes. "How can they be gone? All those people inside that carriage. That chap driving the horses and that scary bloke who shot at us. How can they all just vanish?"

"They went through a portal, some sort of rift in time. They took the blond. They also took the Doctor." The words had hardly passed the Master's lips or they were starting to weigh down heavily on him. They took the Doctor. He had lost him. He was all on his own. Panic stabbed his heart when that painful realization hit him. He had not been alone ever since the Doctor came to rescue him from their doomed home-planet. Sure, he had lost sight of his moronic time-traveling companion once in a while, but not like this. Nothing like this. He couldn't smell him. He couldn't even sense his presence anymore. The Doctor was, truly, gone.

"Oh please tell me you do have a plan." Wilf muttered, but any hope he had was quickly fading when he noticed the miserable look on the Master's face. "Oh no, what do we do now?" Wilf cried out in desperation. "And Donna? What about her? How are we ever going to get her back without the Doctor?"

"Well." The Master mumbled, forcing his brilliant mind to claw itself out of the deep dark abyss that was caused by the Doctor's absence. "The answer is quite simple, isn't it?"

Wilf gazed up at him, raising his eyebrows.

"We need to get back the Doctor first." The Master told him. Forcing himself to keep going on the pure stubbornness of this logic, he started to release one of the horses from his harness.

**4.**

Wilf had never ridden a horse before, and judging by the way the Master handled the black steed, neither had the Timelord. They still managed to arrive back at the church in one piece, but Wilf was quite relieved to feel solid ground under his feet after he let himself drop off the back of the huge animal.

"Dad!" Sylvia came rushing over and immediately dragged him aside. "What have you've been doing, you look dreadful!"

"I feel dreadful." Grimaced Wilf as he tried to readjust his spine and twist the kinks out of his old bones. "Can't imagine those posh people doing this for fun."

"You rode a horse? And you didn't even use a saddle?" Sylvia continued. "Have you any idea how dangerous this is?"

"There wasn't any time to go look for one. It was either get on the horse with him." Wilf gestured at the Master with his thumb. "Or get arrested by the police."

"The police?" Sylvia repeated. She was truly appalled now. "Dad, what the heck have you been up to?"

"Oh don't look at me. It was his fault. He stole the bloody car and drove it to pieces."

"And what happened to him?" Sylvia stared at the Master's blood-stained clothes with horror. "Were you in some kind of accident?"

"Wouldn't worry about him too much." Wilf told Sylvia, aware of the Master's remarkable healing capacity. "Look, we don't have time." Wilf hurried back inside the church, following the Master who had already headed straight for the altar at the back.

"What is he doing here?" Sylvia asked, following her father like an anxious mother hen. "I thought he said he didn't need to be here anymore? I was actually quite relieved."

Wilf shrugged back at her. He genuinely didn't know what the Master was up to, but at least one of them seemed to have a plan. The Master squatted down at the exact spot where the rift that took Donna had appeared. He examined it and drew his finger over the tiled floor. The Master stuck his dust-covered fingertip in his mouth and sucked on it thoughtfully. "These particles taste exactly the same like the ones inside the cabin." He muttered, pulling a face when the bitter aftertaste hit him. "Meaning that they must have jumped back through a breach that opens up in the same timeframe." He stared back at Wilf with a glint shimmering in his eyes and a smile dawning on his lips.

"Um, Master, are you all right?" Wilf asked.

The Master jumped back up. "I am more than all right old man. I am a BLOODY genius!" He roared, tapping a finger on his forehead. "The Doctor didn't want me to go after the girl and look what happened to him, he got abducted by a bunch of third-rate time-meddlers. Forget about saving your precious Donna, the git can't even save himself. Oh but he is in luck though." He grinned.

"He is?" Wilf mumbled, fearing that the Master, without the Doctor by his side to keep him in check, might have completely lost his mind.

"He got me!" The Master revealed, grinning like a very scary version of a Sesame street muppet before he burst out in a laughter that sounded indeed far from sane.

"Dad." Sylvia said, eyeing worriedly at the ever more deranged-looking young man. "I forbid you to talk to him again. Even if he a friend of the Doctor." She suddenly felt the ice-cold hand of fear clutch around her heart. "Oh my God." She whispered, covering her mouth in shock. "It's you! I knew I've seen that face before! Last Christmas, when the sky was falling and everyone was acting all crazy, you were that man who showed up inside our heads!" Sylvia shrieked, backing away from her living nightmare till she bumped her backside against a table that served-up the catering. In her panic, she grabbed the first thing she could get hold of and pointed it in the Master's face to defend herself.

"Now Sylvia." Wilf tried, holding up his hands in an effort to calm her down. "Listen to me my dear. You're overreacting. You really don't need to be afraid of him."

The Timelord cocked his head. "Now what are you trying to do exactly?" He asked, raising an eyebrow at her.

"I am NOT afraid of you!" Sylvia shrieked, and waved the blunt tableware in front of him.

"So you're going to what, spoon me to death?" The Master chuckled.

"Stop laughing!" Sylvia responded, offended by his rudeness, but also truly wanting him to stop that demonic laughter. "I am NOT going to be ridiculed by some MONSTER!" she shouted, while she kept aiming the soupspoon at him.

That wiped the smile right off the Master's face. "What did you call me?" He hissed, leaning into her.

Wilf jumped between them in a rare fit of bravery. "Sylvia, please stop provoking him. He's like one of those nasty guarddogs who will go for your fingers when you keep dangling a hand in front of his nose." He turned to the Master. "And you, you said you had a plan to get the Doctor and Donna back. Now come on then. Tell me. What is it?"

The Master was pleasantly surprised to finally see a little bit of fire burning inside the old man. "Does that mean you're coming along with me then?" He asked with a grin of anticipation.

"Oh no! No dad! No! You're not going with _him_!" Sylvia objected fiercely.

"Suit yourself. Donna is your granddaughter after all." The Master lured. "Just don't expect me to help her first. My priority is to find the Doctor. If you are not even interested in finding her, why should I care?"

"Don't listen to him dad! He's dangerous! He won't help us to find Donna anyway. You shouldn't go with him!" Sylvia pressed on.

"I'm coming with you." Wilf agreed, without hesitation.

"Splendid." The Master replied with a triumphant smile.

"Dad! I said no!"

"He's right. Donna is my responsibility. I have to go." Wilf told her, and turned around to follow the Master.

"No! You can't just go! Dad, I forbid it!" Sylvia shouted after them, but she was too afraid of her Christmas boogeyman to go after him.

"Now." The Master told Wilf, rubbing in his hands as they marched out of the church in long hasty strides. "Let's get back to the Tardis and see if I can remove the biolock."

"Biolock? What bio-lock?" Wilf asked, hurrying after him while trying to ignore Sylvia who was once again stamping her feet on the carpet. "The Doctor locked the Tardis?"

"He said I couldn't be trusted with her." The Master scoffed. "Not after that little incidence on the red planet." As if he was ever going to sneak off and fly the Tardis around the seven suns of the Barillonia all on his own again. It was an impossible task, even if he had not been blind stinking drunk and depressed as a suicidal lemming. "However." He took his laserscrewdriver out and spun it in the air most confidently. "It shouldn't take me more than a minute to crack it. You know what they say about unlocking a lock. It's as easy as driving a car..."

**5.**

The Tardis control room was a different territory now that the Doctor had vanished and the Master was left in charge. The core was no longer bathing in the familiar, peaceful green glow, but flickered a dangerous orange, while the console that circled around the heart of the Tardis flashed with numerous warning-lights.

"You're not breaking anything, are you?" Wilf asked, observing the Master's action with a growing sense of unease. The Timelord was tackling the biolock that the Doctor had installed as a safety measure to keep the Master from controlling the Tardis in a manner that Wilf wouldn't normally associate with the handling of sophisticated alien technology. At least, the use of a crowbar and what looked like a hospital defibrillator did not immediately spring into mind when Wilf first heard the Master say that he was going to recalibrate the algorithm in order to reset the isomorphic coding. Wilf watched worriedly how the Master yanked out what looked like a computer motherboard and completely flattened it by applying violent blows with his metal rod. "If the Doctor could see this mess." Wilf muttered, shaking his head. "No sir. He wouldn't like what you've done to his machine."

"It's not a machine." The Master replied, keeping himself busy with unplugging a bundle of confusing wires from the console. "This is a Tardis, a living, breathing entity, born out of the fabric of time itself. She is almost as old as your joke of a planet. Give her a little respect." He added with much sincerity, before he yanked out another handful of wires from the Tardis internal drive, and drove the rest of them back inside with the back of the rod. "Almost done." He said, grinning with anticipation, he tossed the crowbar over his shoulder and picked up the two paddles of the defibrillator, placing one on each side of the exposed telepathic circuits. "You better stand back." He told Wilf. "All clear!" He shouted and fired a massive bolt of energy into the system to which the Tardis reacted by sounding loud alarm. All over the dashboard, over-loaded equipment exploded, sending dangerous sparks in the air.

"Are you sure you know what you're going?" Wilf yelled above the racket.

"Of course I know what I am doing!" The Master poked the tip of his tongue out as he concentrated on his task. "I am complete in control. I just need to teach our girl to stop listening to the Doctor and start listening to me." He added before he administrated another nasty zap.

"Our _girl_?" Wilf muttered while furrowing his brows.

"The Doctor's precious frigid little princess." The Master grunted, staring straight at the glowing orange core. "Oh how she hates to be touched by another Timelord. And he's not easy in sharing her either. If you didn't know any better, you would think they have already taken their marriage vows."

The Tardis core went from orange to angry crimson and the alarms became almost deafening in response.

"Oh shut it!" The master yelled and fired another bolt of energy into the circuits.

Somehow in his chaotic ways, he must have hit the right wire, for the alarms died down and with a sulky stammer the engines retreated into a low hum.

"Oh yes! That's much better." The Master noted not without satisfaction. The lights in the control room turned back to a soft green, and the monitors on the dashboard switched on. He tried to feed in some new coordinates. "Finally! It works." He sighed. "Right! Let's get going then."

"Go where? Do you know where to find the Doctor and Donna?" Wilf asked.

"I told you, we've got what we need." The Master brought out the Timpwarp's cocoon and turned to the cyber-glass core of the Tardis. "Now let's see if the Doctor's most precious companion has indeed learned her lesson. Or perhaps she needs to be further motivated?" The Tardis replied by quickly raising a small translucent capsule out of the console. The Master's lips curled into a content smile, and he dropped the white sphere into the container. "Have a little taste." He told her. "Let me know where you think this comes from."

As soon as the Tardis had taken back the capsule, complex calculations appeared on the screens. Then, with a shake and a jolt, the noise of the engines swelled on till the familiar wheezing sound signified their imminent departure.

"Oh yes. Good girl!" The Master grinned. "She has successfully picked up the link! He quickly checked the string of coordinates that flew by on the monitors. "Hold on old man!" He yelled at Wilf, his voice barely rising above the noise. "It looks like this going to be a bit of a bumpy ride!"

**6.**

Donna was having what she thought of as one of her reasonably bad days. She could have considered this as her worst possible day ever, if it wasn't for that she had regained all of her lost memories of traveling with the Doctor. Having once been the Doctor's companion, she could easily recall days that were far, _far_ worse. Still, considering that only this morning, she was convinced that she was getting married to her love of her life, only to be sucked through a gap in time instead, and to end up in smelly historic France in front of a ragged-looking mob, this wasn't exactly her idea of how this day should have gone.

"What am I doing here?" She asked out-loud, and immediately pressed her hands on her mouth when she realized that she just said that in French. She couldn't speak French. Not properly. She only knew two French words, which included bonjour and au revoir, and even those she couldn't pronounce without insulting the locals. It must be the Timelord meta-crisis, she thought. Although she could not recall everything what the Doctor knew and what was once absorbed by her limited human brain cells, she did still feel a bit odd. She was slightly quicker with her wits and a little more extensive in her knowledge. Considering the circumstances, she might call herself lucky. "I shouldn't be here." She muttered, struggling for breath. At first she thought it was because of her nerves, but then she realized that she was no longer wearing her wedding gown. "I'm wearing a bleeding corset." She gasped, looking down with incredulity at the rest of her outfit that to her, looked much like a strange carnival custom. "What is this place?" She glanced around and noticed the blood on the platform, the basket filled with decapitated aristocrats and the threatening wooden structure of the guillotine towering behind her.

"Oh you got to be kidding me." She mumbled. Two soldiers came up to her and grabbed her under her arms.

"Witch!" Yelled a mean-looking old woman. "She transformed herself! Look at her hair. Look at that face! The use of dark magic has drained years out of her."

"Oi! There's nothing wrong with this face! And have you looked at yourself in the mirror lately?" Donna said, as the soldiers pulled back. The crowd was going mad. People were jumping beneath the scaffold and were trying to climb onto the platform to get to her.

"Witch!" They kept shouting. "Kill that witch before she tries to escape again!"

"What do we do sir?" The soldier asked, holding on to a very confused and frightened Donna.

"Get her under the guillotine again." The commander ordered. "And fast before they ransack the equipment!"

"Wait! What are you doing?" Donna shouted as the soldiers followed his order and dragged her to the executioner. "This is a mistake! I am not supposed to be here! I can't die in 18th century France! I haven't even been born yet!"

"She's talking all strange." One of the soldiers doubted. "And she really doesn't look like the woman who were trying to execute before."

"That's because she is a witch!" His comrade argued. "Look, she's wearing the same dammed clothes. It must be her."

They handed her over to the hooded killer, who closed his fingers around Donna's throat and held on to her like he was holding a chicken by the neck. "This time you won't escape me, madame." He grunted, eying down at the discontent public. "Marcel the mass murderer has a reputation to keep." He nodded at her her, and went through her red locks with his dirty sausage fingers. To her horror, he pressed his nose on her neck to breath in the smell. "Red." He grinned sheepishly. "Pretty."

"Get on with it you buffoon!" The commander barked. "Hurry up before this crazy lot tears down the place."

"Yes sir." The executioner complied, and bound Donna's hands behind her back with a coarse rope before he led her to the guillotine. When he forced her head down and sandwiched it between the two wooden panels of this grisly murder machine, Donna couldn't help but the reconsider her situation here. She had it wrong all right. This was, without a doubt, going to be the worst day of her life.

**7.**

The Tardis landed with an unusual high number of bumps and shakes, and rammed into a cart filled with onions before it came to a full stop. The Master rushed outside, followed by Wilf who stepped into the dark alleyway with buckling knees. Curious, the old man looked around. On both side of the narrow street were high, five-story buildings with large window, most of them closed with wooden shutters. Everywhere he looked, the blue, white and red vertical stripes of the tricolores were dangling between the lines of drying laundry, while the pikes of the small cast-iron balconies were adorned with ribbon rosettes in green.

"Where are we?" Wilf asked. "I mean what time?"

"Judging by the sight and smell of this place, somewhere in France, before it was fashionable to invest in something as redundant as soap and public hygiene." The Master complained, pinching his nose to shut out the stench of rotting onions and the piss-filled open sewer that ran by the side of the road.

"You can almost cut it with a knife. Let's get out of here."

They quickly walked out of the back-alley and followed the flow of people in the main-street to a large open space where a huge crowd had gathered around a raised wooden platform. Soldiers stood guard in their blue and white uniforms, and had trouble keeping the tumultuous public at bay, even with their bayonets aimed at them.

"This a public execution place." Wilf muttered. "Look at that thing, that's a real guillotine."

"Welcome to 18th century revolutionary France." The Master announced.

"Those poor people." Wilf gazed at the group of miserable prisoners that were kept inside a penned cart. "They're going to chop off their heads!"

"Yeah well, there's nothing we can do about it. Besides, who are we to judge the quirky habits of the locals. For as far as I understand it, this whole decapitating fat aristocrats business is as much part of their culture as their strange fondness for everything pungent."

"Oh God, I can't watch." Wilf muttered.

"Then don't." The Master said with very little sympathy. "Look, can you stop dwelling on this subject? We're here to find the Doctor, but I can't pick up his scent in this overwhelming smelly armpit of a crowd, let alone trace him. Let's get a move on. This whole bloody butcher's parade has nothing to do with us anyway." He was about to wade his way out of the sweaty mass of foul human bodies, when Wilf spotted the girl in the blue dress who was being dragged to the guillotine. Although they were standing quite far away at the back, Wilf's old eyes clearly recognized the flash of vibrant red in the woman's hair.

"Oh my God. That's Donna!" He shouted out, and started waving frantically. "She can't see me! Donna I'm here. What is she doing up there? Oh no." He pulled back the Master and pointed out the unlucky prisoner who was now being locked between the wooden panels of the deadly contraption by the executioner.

The Master observed the dire situation with slight disappointment. "We've found your granddaughter? You would think that the Tardis would set her priorities right and find the doctor first."

"They're gonna kill her! Do something!" Wilf told him.

"Tell me, are you also this demanding when you're with the Doctor?" The Master complained. "I've never realized that keeping a human pet could be such a handful. _Explain me this. Go rescue me that. _Honestly, this is tiring, where is the fun in it?"

"Please! If you don't stop them Donna's gonna die!" Wilf begged.

For a moment, it seemed as if the Master wasn't going to give in, but then he rolled his eyes and sighed deeply before he started moving towards the scaffolds. He was closely followed by a very anxious Wilf.

Meanwhile, Donna was getting more frightened by the minute. "You can't do this to me!" She rambled. "I am not even a noble woman. I am from bloody Chiswick!" Locked in her uncomfortable position, she gazed over the crowd helplessly, hoping to find that one familiar face of the Doctor. He should be here, she told herself. Otherwise, why did she regain her memory and did she end up in revolutionary France. All this wonky Timelords and time-travelling stuff had to have something to do with the Doctor, who should by the way, get his boney space alien ass here real quick now, or her head was going to end up in the basket.

"Any last words?" The commander dared to ask again.

"Yes, as a matter of fact." Donna took in a deep breath and started yelling her lungs out. "Doctor! Where the hell are you! DOCTOR!"

"Get on with it." The commander ordered, sticking his fingers in his ears to block out the woman's hysterical screams.

The executioner smiled creepily down at Donna. "Here, let me get these pretty red locks out of the way of your pretty little neck." He brushed her hair away and then started hoisting up the cut-throat blade.

Oh my God. Donna thought. I am really going to die. They are going to chop my head off in 18th century France on my own bloody wedding day. And I even didn't get to be married to Shaun first!

She shuddered when the back of the blade hit the wooden support beam at the very top. Somewhere behind her, a drum ruffled to mark the moment of her death. Donna closed her eyes, and with the very last breath in her lungs, she shouted out over the crowd. "DOCTOR!"

"Wait! Stop the execution immediately!"

Donna's eyes flew open, her heart filling with new hope. She had anticipated that the Doctor had finally come to her rescue, but instead, a man she didn't know had jumped on the platform and was now standing next to her facing the angry mob.

"Get off the bloody stage! Who the hell do you think you are!" The bloodthirsty audience yelled back at him like one united multi-headed beast. "We want to see that rich witch bleed! Get on with it!"

The commander stepped forward. "Who the hell are you?" He was already gesturing to his men to come and arrest the intruder, but even under these threatening circumstances, the Master remained completely calm.

"I am a citizen of the republic." He proclaimed in a loud voice, replying more to the crowd than he was answering to the commander. "Just like you." He spread his arms wide and made a theatrical bow as if to introduce himself.

"All right. Who let this village idiot on stage?" The officer barked at his men. "Drag him off now!"

The crowd started to hiss and jeer at him. "Get off! You're holding up the execution! Off with her head and with that of yours if you don't piss off! What are you doing up there anyway."

"I am here to humbly ask you, the good citizens of this great city, to let this woman go." The Master answered, his voice clear and unwavering.

"What?" Came the response from the below. "But she's a bloody witch!"

"Yeah. I saw her change from a blond into a redhead. We can't let her go!"

"Is that what we truly believe in? Witchcraft?" The Master scoffed, looking around at all those sheepishly looking faces, he actually didn't have a doubt in his mind that he was indeed talking to a bunch of superstitious morons, but that wasn't the point he was trying to make. "You monsieur." He singled out one of the more dense looking farmers. One who was about to pelt him with rotting onions. "How can you believe in such preposterous ideas as magical transformations and still wear the tricolor, _the citizen's _tricolor, with pride? Don't we all know that superstition is a fallacy imposed to us by the king and the king's men, to keep his bright and brave subjects in chains? Aren't witch-hunts and inquisitions things of the dark Middle Ages, when ignorance and gullibility reigned? Surely we're now beyond that?"

A silence fell over the crowd as most of them had trouble to process what was just said.

"You mean…I am stupid to believe that she's a witch?" The farmer replied, narrowing his eyes as his mind struggled to produce this one thought. Donna shot a worried look at the Master, as if to ask what the hell he was trying to do here, but the Timelord replied with a cocky little wink of his right eye.

"No, no monsieur. Of course not! And that's the whole point!" He stepped forward, his posture radiated full confidence and pure authority. "Don't you see that by condemning this poor soul, we are allowing us to be manipulated, once again, by the aristocracy and clergy? They want us to remain dumb, like a flock of sheep, being herded into whatever shape they desire. I tell you, we are not sheep!" He slammed his fist into her hand to accentuate this ridiculous point. "We are enlightened men and women, brothers and sisters of the revolution. We are children of the teachings of Rousseau and Voltaire, and we will no longer fall for the traps set out for us by religion and the crown's authority. We can think for ourselves. We can see for ourselves, and what we see here, bowed down before you and left at your mercy, is _not_ a witch." He walked over to Donna and grabbed her by her hair to show the crowd her face.

"Look at her." He told them in a dramatic voice. "Stare into this woman's eyes. These are the eyes of a mother, a loving spouse, a kind and caring sister, an obedient daughter, but not a witch. There are no witches. Only fools believe in them, and we, brothers and sisters, are no longer fools."

Nobody in the crowd, not even the soldiers, dared to contradict him in fear to be made to look like an complete idiot in front of the others, but then one smart ass who didn't know when to shut up stepped forward. "But…" Reasoned a fishwife of woman in the front. "Even if she's not a witch, she's still one of those court parasites. I still say off with her head!"

"Yeah." Agreed another of her hagged sisters. "I hate these rich aristocratic dogs! Let them die!" She jeered.

"Are you joking with me?" The Master responded, bursting out in laughter. "These tragic figures?" He gestured at the miserable looking lot waiting on the cart. "These half-starved men and women with wigs and clothes half-eaten away by moths and lice, their minds dulled by years of imprisonment, why in the name of reason would you consider them to be worth your wrath? They're just minor nobles, one generation back and they're just like you and me. Just take this sad example of womanhood." Donna cried out when he lifted her head again. "She's more built to work in the fields and to give birth to half-a-dozen of your children than to strut daintily at court. Every one can see that she is just as common as muck."

"Well…" The fishwife hesitated. "She is a bit bulky for a corset-queen."

"She doesn't really look like a noble woman to me." Pondered the farmer. "Well she did chance and all, but then, he said that bit didn't really happen…" The rotting onion started to slip out of his hand as the confusion was slapping him silly.

"Maybe we did indeed make a mistake." Opted a gullible milkmaid. "She is one of us, only dressed a little fancier."

The doubtful murmurs were like music in the Master's ears. "Brothers and sisters of the revolution." He exclaimed as he continued to preach his gospel of doubt. "We have reached the phase in the revolution of our beloved country in which the real enemies of the people have already been disposed of and we're left with the sad residue, the marginally well-off. Do we really need to murder them as well? We speak of equality and fairness. We believe in these ideals with our heart and soul. So what is their crime? Step forward if anyone here truly knows what they are." He paused. No-one in the audience moved a muscle, although the French commander did try to make a hesitant move.

"And even if we decide that we want to kill them to satisfy our anger, what's next?" The Master continued, grinning as he knew that he was now in full control of the crowd and could make them act on his will. "What happens when we run out of these sheep-goats? Will we turn on our own? Those who have little money, but worked and saved hard to own it? The butchers, the fishmongers, and farmers, will they all be next? And what if we run out of them too, do we start murdering the innocent for speaking out for their discontent, the people who starve in the street and who the leaders of the revolution have abandoned? How long before this reign of justice turns into a reign of pure terror?"

"He's right." Gasped the milkmaid. "We must stop and think about our actions."

"Hey, I own a fish stall." The fishwife muttered, you could almost see the grew wheels spinning inside her head. "He's talking about what's going to happen to me!" She concluded.

"He's talking about us, you idiot! We are the people who are going to be next if we don't stop this madness." Someone more sensible said.

"We can't keep on murdering the prisoners. Not without a fair trial."

"They had a trial. We went there last Friday to spit on them, you remember?"

The Master smirked and relished in the chaos that he had caused. He always felt good when he could use his natural talent for manipulation, but this was on such a massive scale that it was ecstatic, and he almost wanted to shut his eyes and drink in this moment like a plant would bath in the sun.

"This crazy shenanigan has been going on far too long." The commander said, finally getting his act back together. "Remove him and place him under arrest!" He told his men.

The Master calmly turned around to face two French soldiers marching on to him with their bayonets aimed at his heart. "You are under arrest!" Proclaimed the most senior of the two, but the mob at their feet didn't quite agree with this.

"Let him go! He's done nothing wrong!" The milkmaid yelled, trying to pull the soldier down by his boots.

"Yeah. He only said the truth! Unlike you, you lying dogs!" Protested the farmers.

"Let him go! He's one of us!" They jeered, and started pelting the troops with onions. "He's the voice of the people! Listen to him you bloody bastards! Show some respect for the true spirit of the republic!"

"Get rid of him now!" The commander barked.

The soldiers ran up to the Master and were about to jab him in his stomach when they were stopped by a hostile line of pitchforks pointing up from the angry crowd below.

"You touch him and I am going to stick this in your fat neck!" Yelled a fishmonger.

"We don't want this bloodshed anymore!" Exclaimed the fishwife. "I'm sick of watching people dying. This isn't the utopia that was promised to us."

"The government lied to us!" Concluded someone in the crowd, and this stirred up such aggression that the soldiers could no longer hold down the mob. People started to attack the wooden structure with whatever they could get their hands on, while others climbed on the platform and tried to topple over the guillotine.

"You know." The Master told the commander while he watched him worry about the desperate situation. "If you just let the redhead go, I promise I'll go away and stop talking to them." And he showed the officer one of his politest smiles.

The French officer had to swallow hard before he could finally give out the order. "Release the woman."

The executioner and the troops gazed doubtfully at their superior.

"Quickly. Before this escalates!" The commander barked, nervously keeping an eye on the raised pitchforks.

Donna gasped when they finally lifted the wooden block from her neck. Shaking, she moved away from the deathtrap. Her eyes went over the chaotic scene below and to her astonishment, she recognized one very familiar face.

"Granddad!" She yelled. "Is that really you?"

"Donna!" Wilf waved, he felt so relieved that she was finally safe. Donna rushed down the steps and ran to her grandfather.

"Thank you good sir." The Master told the commander. "Now if you could excuse me. I have more pressing business to attend elsewhere."

"What? Is this all?" The commander asked. "What about the other prisoners?"

"By all means, do with them what you like, why would I care?" The Master replied laughingly, a little puzzled by the question. "Keep up the good work though." He added with a wide grin and giving him a thumbs-up before he went down the steps, leaving him and his men to deal with the angry mob.

"Donna!" Wilf cried out and hugged her tightly.

"Gramps! Oh I am so glad to see you here! No wait, I don't mean _here_. _Here_ is really bad. What are you doing here?" She asked, getting worried again. "Did the Doctor take you? Where is he anyway? I thought he would show up since I was in mortal danger, but in the end I had to be rescued by someone else. Someone I didn't even know. A not-the-Doctor. How is that for a loyal mate? Pretty lousy I would say."

"Donna…You're not hurt are you?" Wilf muttered, noticing the weird psychobabble. "Let me look at you."

"I am not ill gramps. I am just…actually I am quite angry that the Doctor didn't show up. What am I? A disposable friend? Last season's companion? He didn't even come to my wedding."

"Well, we didn't really tell him…" Wilf tried, just when the Master showed up with a huge content grin on his face.

"Ah…the human soul." He mused. "It's such a delightful instrument to play."

"You!" Donna told him, suddenly distracted from her Doctor-obsessed ramblings by his very presence. "What you just said was plain evil!"

"What? What did you tell them?" Wilf asked, for some reason, which might had something to do with the way the Master had mistreated the Tardis, foreign languages were no longer automatically translated inside to the human companion. Wilf's French was pretty rubbish, and he had hardly understood a word of what the Master had said to the locals.

"He's going to let the rest of the prisoners die." Donna told Wilf. "While actually he could have saved them. He just didn't care."

The Master crossed his arms and studied her. "Do you speak French?" He asked pensively.

"Yes. Yes Frederick, or who-ever you are." Replied Donna.

"You couldn't have heard me." The Master noted. "You were already halfway down the stairs when I talked to the officer." The Master mumbled. "Hang on." He pulled a face of true disgust. "Frederick?" He looked angrily at Wilf for an explanation.

"How come you can understand what he's been saying?" Wilf asked. "Donna, you never took any French language lesions before."

"I…I dunno." Donna stuttered, clutching her head, for she suddenly felt very dizzy. "It all kinda translates inside my head." She gazed up at the Master accusingly. "Why didn't you save the others like you have saved me?"

"Because…I am a evil bastard, apparently. The name is not Frederick by the way." He added sourly. If this was all the gratitude he was going to get for his troubles, he really didn't understand why he would bother to bring these humans home. Surely they never were this ungrateful to the Doctor. But he had little time to wind himself up about it, for over the heads of the restless mob, he saw the commander gesturing at him as he spoke to his senior officer, who turned and marched with a small troop of soldiers in their direction.

"Maybe we should be moving along before we all end up at the butchers." The Master commented. He pushed Wilf and Donna through the crowd towards the edge of the plaza, where they then fled into the extended maze of the backstreet alleys.

_TBC_

PLease comment and review if this story pleases you, it keeps me motivated to go on.

Kind regards

A_  
><em>


	3. Chapter 3

For those of you who have left a review behind, thank you all for the encouragements and the suggestions!

**Chapter 3**

**1.**

The Doctor woke up to world that was upside down and was moving fast across his vision. He tried to turn his head to the side, and realized that he was on some kind of open farm cart, and bound with his back on one of the tree trunks that were stacked up high on the horse-drawn vehicle. His usual ensemble of his brown striped suit, long coat and white trainers had been replaced with some kind of farmhand garb, composed of a badly mended shirt with large moth-eaten holes in it and armpit stains. On his feet dangled a strange type of sandal-like footwear made of dry hay and caked dung. He was hanging with his head over the side, while the rest of the passengers, the two rough looking men and this blond fugitive, were quietly sitting on the benches. They were slightly better off, with the two men within his sight dressed like farmers and the girl wearing a clean farm maid outfit. The Doctor blinked his eyes and studied her pale, heart-shaped face.

"Hang on." He muttered, loud enough for his captors to hear. "I know you! You're not even a real blond, are you?" He commented with eyes wide in amazement. "I knew I recognize those cat-green eyes and that pouty little smile. You're the Master's wife!" He grinned smugly to himself till a second thought hit him.

"Only…that wasn't real. Everything that happened after we arrived on the Infinity was just a program to keep Rachel from going mad on that spaceship. There was never a Treaty of Saxony, or a refugee space colony called Agora, the Master was never lord chancellor and he never took a woman called Anne Bullen as his wife." The Doctor stared at her, eyes unblinking, even his brilliant mind was struggling to put one and one together, while poor Anne, who didn't know what to make of the his bizarre ramblings, looked away scared.

"So…who the heck are you?" The Doctor finally concluded.

"She is our lady Anne Boleyn." Scarface answered, coming forward and putting a sharp knife on the Doctor's throat. "And you better stop talking this gibberish to her or I swear I will cut you like a pig at the butchers."

"Easy now. I was just wondering." The Doctor responded, looking up at the blade. "Hi! I am the Doctor by the way." Smiling goofily at him to break the ice. "You know how it is, a long journey, nothing much to see on the road, and before you know it, you start chatting away to complete strangers. I like talking to strangers." The Doctor added with a silly grin. "Well, you start out as strangers, but you might end up as friends, and isn't that what makes a journey truly worthwhile? Meeting other people and making new chums? So let's start over again, shall we? Her name is Anne." He nodded at the girl. "I am the Doctor, and who are you?"

The Doctor felt the tip of the blade scratch over the stubble of his chin.

"You're not really the chatty type?" The Doctor remarked.

"I am Antoine Briet, and I not your friend, nor our is lady Anne." Antoine replied threateningly. "For your information, I like my prisoners quiet and demure. If they don't agree, I'll help them out with this." The tapped his knife on the Doctor's cheekbone.

The Doctor looked back at him with no fear in his eyes. "This isn't the 21th century anymore. Why have you taken me back with you?" He asked sternly.

Antoine was clearly surprised by the Doctor's clear observation. "How did you know that we have traveled in time?"

"Let's say I have a real six sense for this sort of thing. Besides, I have been here many times before." The Doctor craned his neck and took in the passing countryside at his leisure. "Yep, 18th century French farmland, and considering the climate, and by the sight of the green crops in the field and the fancy new road lined with birch-trees, I would say somewhere west of Paris near Versailles. Am I right?"

"Remarkable." Antoine noted, putting his knife away slowly. "No wonder the Watcher wanted us to bring you back alive. What more do you know?"

"Well, I don't want to sound too clever or anything, but I did notice a few interesting things." The Doctor continued. "You used a material link to bring us back. Hooks that works like a rubber band on one of those paddleball things. Energy is required to swat the ball away, but the elastic band will stretch and make the ball come back. Based on the same principle, you used the copper chains with the medallions to return to your original departure point. They will sweep along anything to which it is attached, which is why I got to wear one of these." The Doctor lifted his feet a few centimeters up for as far as the ropes allowed and jingled the chains to make his point.

"The hooks can only bring back living things. When they are not attached to the flesh they won't even return." Antoine told the Doctor, clearly impressed.

"And that's why we left almost everything behind. Actually." The Doctor reconsidered. "That was everything. The horse-carriage, the horses, the guns, even our clothes. We arrived here in nothing but our birthday-suits. You mean old lot stole a cart and clothes from some poor farmer family and off we went. One thing still bothers me though." The Doctor remarked. "Like I said, you need energy to swing the ball. You need a huge amount of energy. Now, in 18th French, where would you possibly get enough to be able to send three grown men, a large carriage and a four-span of horses 300-odd years into the future?"

"The Watcher knows how." Antoine said, grinning slyly. "She is gifted with the sight and can see into the river of time. Our Lord has blessed her with the knowledge of the future, and through her He has shown us how to build the great machine that collects the lightening from the sky."

"Ah, using atmospheric electrostatic discharge to fuel the jump, very clever! And you said your _Lord_ whispered this sweet idea into the Watcher's head?" The Doctor raised his eyebrows in suspicion. "It makes me very curious who this Lord of yours might be."

"Why don't you go and ask the Watcher yourself? We are almost there." Antoine grinned and leaned back knowingly, revealing the dark chateau to the Doctor that loomed at the horizon.

**2.**

30 kilometers to the east in the ancient heart of Paris, The Master was still trying to get the Doctor's human companions to safety in the labyrinth that made up the capital's backstreets.

"Why is she calling me Fredrick?" The Master asked while he kept moving on a healthy speed. Wilf was a bit surprised that the Timelord decided to know this while they were still being pursued by French soldiers, but then again, more peculiar things about the Master's behavior had puzzled Wilf before. "Um, that's my fault really. You were at my place, don't you remember? The injured leg, and you not being much able to talk?"

"Not really. No" The Master mused. "But by the sound of it, I am sure I must have repressed it for a good reason."

"Ha!" Donna burst into a chuckle. "I remember you. You acted like you were soft in the head. Gramps put you in a wheelchair and introduced you as Minnie's grandson Fredrick to me. I thought you were a retard."

"Donna dear, maybe he doesn't need you to remind him too much of that." Wilf said, fearing for the Master's reaction.

"What?" Donna said, fully oblivious to the fact that she was insulting a dangerously instable Timelord. "He just called me as common as muck in front of an entire crowd. Can't I say anything back?"

"You know." The Master said, narrowing his eyes in thought. "I do remember something about two dancing mice. One had a comically large head and the other one was bouncing around in a straightjacket." He shook the lunatic images of the cartoon out of his head. "What on Gallifrey was that all about?" He noted, quite irritated.

"Oh you remember watching that DVD with me?" Donna pointed out, and started singing to his face. "The pinky and the brain, the pinky and the brain, one is a genius, the other's insane. You're the insane one of course. There is only one genius I know, and he's a Timelord, not a…Fredrick!"

"She's acting all weird." Wilf said worriedly.

"That's the remnants of the Timelord meta-crisis working on her. Although the Timewarp cocoon has done its job and safely released most of the excess energy, there is still some left that has to be dispatched on its own. Plus she has just regained all of her memory of the Doctor. Her neurons need a good rewiring. She will be spewing out nonsense for the next couple of hours or more. You better try to get used to it."

"So, you're not offended? You're not going to hold a grudge?" Wilf tried.

The Master returned to him a most vengeful look. "I didn't say that."

"You know what I am going to call you?" Donna laughed, as if she was telling a really good joke to her best mate. "Fredrick the retard. No wait…Fredrick the evil retard. That suits you, don't you think?"

"Maybe we should gag her." The Master grunted, looking all too sinister. From the periphery of his vision, he saw a French onion-seller secretly glance over his shoulder at the strange trio. When the Master looked again, he saw the man talking to a off-duty soldier who happened to pass by. He was pointing at Donna.

"Time to disappear again." The Master mumbled. He pushed both Donna and Wilf into a side-street and banged with his fists on the first door he came across. "Yeah." A bald, sweaty man answered. Before he could ask the strangely dressed man why the heck he had showed up on his doorstep, the Timelord had already pressed his hand on his nose and mouth and shoved him back inside. "Come on granddad!" The Master hissed, gesturing that he should follow him. "And take that mouthy redhead with you."

"What are you going to do with him?" Wilf asked while he pulled his granddaughter inside the house, and shut and barricaded the door behind him. "You're not going to hurt him are you?"

"Of course not." The Master smirked. He dug his fingers into the man's face and slammed the back of his head against the brick wall. It knocked the Frenchman out completely, and his round body collapsed like a heavy sack of flower on the floor.

"Gramps, my head." Donna clutched her forehead again and swayed unsteadily on her feet.

"Donna!" Wilf rushed over to her and reached her just in time to prevent Donna from falling on top of the unconscious bloke. "It hurts." Donna whined as she lay in her grandfather's arms. "Oh it hurts so much."

She closed her eyes and all went black.

**3.**

The horse-drawn cart entered a large secluded courtyard within the walls of the chateau. A huge contraption had been constructed close to the mainhouse dominated the open space. Two wooden structures towered above the surrounding buildings, with on top a metal rod connected to wires that snaked their way down from to top into a an enormous silver coil, that hummed dangerously with static. With 30 meters of height, these two towers were the largest structure in the surrounding lands, and would indeed most likely lure the lightening to strike down here if there happened to be any thunderclouds around. The Doctor stared at the machine, clearly impressed by the genius of the design. He particularly liked the way the men had improvised on some of the parts, using wood and cotton and even straw to replace the more modern materials like plastic and rubber that were needed for isolation but still remained to be discovered. He had very little time to admire his captors handiwork though, for as soon as the horses came to a full stop, Antoine pulled out his knife again and cut the Doctor loose from his bonds.

"Get up." He ordered, gesturing with a sweep of his head that he should get off the cart.

"Where are we going?" The Doctor asked, more curious than afraid.

"You're going to meet the Watcher." Antoine answered, sticking the blade in the Timelord's back while he helped Anne to step off the vehicle. The three of them entered the main hall of the chateau while Henri and the second horseman took the horses to the stable. The Doctor strolled calmly down the path paved with soft carpets with his hands inside his pockets and admired the beautifully decorated interior like he was a tourist making a cultural visit.

"From floor to ceiling high glass windows, velvet drapes, bras fixtures and gold ornaments, impressive statues, and everywhere you look, marble, marble and more marble." He whistled, clearly impressed. "This place must have cost a fortune."

"It was in possession of the late king Louis XVI before the revolution." Antoine explained. "It had been in the ownership of the royal family for generations and was used as a hunting lodge even before they built Versailles."

"What's this place called?" The Doctor asked, trying to recall all that he knew about the late French monarchy.

Antoine performed a little curtsey and gestured with his arms wide as if to welcome him. "This? This is the Chateau Fontainebleau."

"Fontainebleau?" The Doctor knitted his brows together. "Hang on, that burnt down years ago! It was lost in the time of the late king's grandfather. It shouldn't be still standing."

"It should have been lost indeed, but it was saved. It was to be struck by lightening, but the timely arrival of the sacred Order of the Watcher had prevented the catastrophic fire that would have otherwise destroyed it. In gratitude of our service, the Sun king granted our Order the right by royal decree to live in the chateau. This has been our temple of worship ever since the late 17th century."

"So let me get this clear, you gained a whole castle because you just happened to be in the neighborhood to harvest lightening?" The Doctor scratched the back of his head. "Blimey, talk about reaping a windfall."

"We weren't just lucky Doctor." Antoine told him. "We were guided." And pointed to the sky above.

"Rrrright." The Doctor replied, being old and wise enough not to get into a discussion with a religious fanatic, he preferred to gaze away from Antoine and to admire the rich oil-paintings on the walls for a while, before he turned and met Anne's gaze.

"You know." The Doctor said, staring at the girl. "I was wondering, since your surname is Boleyn, are there any connections with, you know, _the_ Anne Boleyn, the Tudor queen of England? The one who was Henry the 8th's mistress, but unfortunately lost her head after she finally weaseled her way in to become his second wife? I mean, weren't your parent's not just a little bit apprehensive to call you Anne?"

Anne suddenly turned a whiter shade of pale.

"Stop reminding her." Antoine said with a sternness in his voice that revealed to the Doctor that this was no laughing matter.

"What?" The Doctor grinned, pretending to be fully unaware of the impact his words had on the poor girl. "Surely, she's not truly Anne Boleyn, the most happy of the six wives of murderous king Henry." His goofy smile disappeared from his face as he raised his eyebrows and studied her. "Or is she?"

"Well done." A frail, ancient voice echoed through the hall. The Doctor swirled around in surprise. From out of the different rooms, monks dressed in red monastery robes came forward. Their faces were half-hidden by their hoods, but what was visible to the Doctor revealed horrible disfigured features, inflamed lesions the their skin that have eaten away noses and eyelids, making them look like leprosy victims. A sedan chair was carried by four of these men into the room. The female figure sitting inside was hidden from sight by a gauze curtain.

"You're blessed with an extraordinary clarity of mind to be able to see so far through the veils of time." The woman whispered, slowly clapping in her hands. "My Lord was right to select you for our sacred ritual."

"The Watcher I presume." The Doctor muttered when he saw Anne, Antoine, and the monks prostrate themselves in front of her. He stepped forward, his eyes shimmering with indignation. "If she's truly Anne Boleyn the Tudor queen-" He pointed out. "And she is here, alive and well 300 odd years after her death, then you lot have committed a terrible crime!"

"Why do you believe so?" The Watcher said.

"Because she is a fixed point in time. What happened to her should not be changed, ever. No-one can mess around with the time-stream like this and not expect something horrible to happen!" The Doctor answered back.

"Who are you to decide what can be altered, and what not?" The veiled woman asked.

"Trust me. I am a Timelord. One of the last of a mighty, ancient race. My people have been watching over the universe since the very beginning, and I can tell you for sure that you have made a gigantic mistake by allowing this woman to survive into this century."

"My Lord has saved this wretched queen from the executioner's blade and guided her to us. Everything yields to my his almighty power, even the streams of time itself." The woman raised herself out of her seat and pointed at the Doctor with a thin, skeletal hand. "Even you are only here because my Lord commands it. You may be a lord of Time, but my Lord is its one and only true master, _Doctor_."

The Doctor's eyes grew wide in shock. "How do you know my name?"

"He whispered it to me. In my dreams he reveals to me the future. A future that is enlightened by reason and progress, dominated by science. We humans will no longer have to fear the dark. He will come and bless us with the knowledge from the stars and guide us their light."

"Who is this Lord of yours? And how come he's only speaking to you on not to any of them?" The Doctor asked, keeping it light, but truly worrying. He clearly remembered River's portentous prophecies, and the way the Watcher was rambling about his secret Lordship was setting off alarm bells inside his head.

"He came from a most sacred place, the cradle of stars. He died in fire but was reborn. His voice was once silenced, but now calls out again over the celestial spheres. I heard his call when I was a child." The Watcher whispered. "I was herding my father's goats in the field when a star fell out of the skies. It struck down a nearby tree and ignited a sea of flames. I was burnt, my flesh incinerated. My father found me surrounded by ashes and the corpses of our animals. The priest told him I would not to live to see another sunrise. But he was wrong. As I lay in the darkness, suffering from the most unimaginable pain, I heard his voice in the night, and he promised me salvation."

"So he saved you." The Doctor said, and snapped his fingers. "Abracadabra, just like that and you were healed?"

"Does this look like a healed body to you?" The Watcher screeched spitefully. The curtains part and she was revealed to the Doctor, an ancient, almost mummified corpse of a woman with a skin the color of ash. Although she looked frail, the tendons around her bones stretched with ease and her eyes shone with a bewitching glow.

"No-one!" She spat bitterly. "Not even a God could undo what the fires had done to me, but my Lord let me live. He granted me an extension to my miserable short life, so I may serve His cause. My father thought that I had been resurrected by the Devil, and cast me out. I wandered the lands for decades, always listening, always guided by His Voice, and found others like me. Every town I entered I came across the sick and the weak, the vulnerable and suffering. They came to me for guidance, and in name of my Lord, I became a shepherd to these lost souls. I let my Lord speak to them through me, and we became his sacred flock."

"I'm sorry, did you say flock? Oh like in a herd of sheep you mean?" The Doctor said rather rudely. "Well, I am not quite sure that's the most intelligent thing to do." The Doctor scratched the back of his neck. "Still, I agree with you that it is better to be outcasts together than to be an outcast alone in these harsh times."

"We erected the sacred Order of the Watcher. We are all brothers and sisters, enlightened by the word of our Lord, and have left the age of superstition and prejudice behind us."

"Yes - yes, if only the rest of the world could be so clever to catch up and to think like that then we're all better off." The Doctor muttered. "The sacred Order of the Watcher you say, does that involve an emblem of some sort? Oh you must have one." He teased, but his hearts were beating fast inside his chest. "Come on! No self respectful order can do without one." He raised his eyebrows at her.

"The symbol of our Lord, the alpha and omega, merged into one. For he is the beginning of times, and the end of times." Answered the Watcher, raising her branchlike arms into the sky to signify his glory.

"If that's truly the symbol of your order, why is it showing up everywhere in the time-stream? I've been on a spaceship in the 25th century where I came across this sign, and it's popping up throughout 21st century London where it's been following me and my companion around. Now why is that happening?"

"Our Lord's voice can be heard throughout history. It ripples waves of consciousness in the hearts of men from all different times. It would not surprise me that he has disciples everywhere." The woman grinned her skull-like smile. "Listen Doctor." She closer her eyes and threw her head back. "Listen, can you not hear him? His voice…like a distant drumbeat."

First the Doctor thought he was listening to his own heartbeat, but then he became aware of the rise of a rhythmic drumming that echoed inside his skull. He froze. He recognized that noise. He had heard it before, 20 years ago, on a cold Christmas Eve, when the wounded Master had, in his desperation, shared his faltering mind with him. That brutal sound that had robed the Master from his sanity, those four taps that had haunted and destroyed his companion's life, had returned, and was now residing inside the Doctor's head.

"No!" The Doctor yelled, pressing his hands onto his ears. The Watcher watched how the Timelord shook his head violently to get rid of her Lord's voice, and burst into a vindictive demonic laughter. The Doctor struggled hard to focus his mind on banishing the eerie drums from his consciousness. When he finally succeeded, he glared up at the Watcher, his eyes blazing.

"Who is your Lord?" He demanded to know, although in his hearts, he truly dreaded to hear the truth.

"Oh Doctor, my Lord has countless names. Some might call him the Light of the North, others the Saint of Lepers, and the Resurrector of the Dead. He even has names across the starts that cannot be pronounced by a mortal tongue. However, to someone like you, Doctor, one of the two last remaining children of Gallifrey, he will be best known as the father of your most noble race…"

The Doctor felt the ice-cold grip of fear clutch his hearts when a smile, as cold as hand reaching out from a grave, crossed the Watcher's horrific face.

"My Lord's true name is Rassilon, and he has finally returned."

**4.**

With the musky smell of animals and wet hay in the air, Donna thought she had woken up in a barn in Stansted again, just like a week ago after she had her crazy hen night. She was lying on straw bedding in a corner of what looked like a prehistoric kitchen annex stable with an apple stuffed in her mouth. Puzzled, she spat out the fruit and gazed around, wondering how many pints she must have had to get this drunk and to end up here. Her confused mind only made an effort to scramble itself together again when he saw the sweaty bald Frenchman tied up in a chair at the other end of the room.

"Right." She muttered, not very convinced that she was fully sober. "Ancient kitchen, Smelly French bloke, apple in my mouth….Where the hell am I?"

"Donna, you're up!"

Donna sighed when he recognized Wilf's familiar voice. She turned around and saw Wilf standing there with a damping bowl of what looked like porridge in his hands, looking down at her with a worried expression on his kind old face.

"Gramps! Oh thank God. I had the most awful nightmare." She exclaimed, giving her granddad a tight hug. "I was getting married to Shaun, but right before we were about to exchange wedding vows, this light came out of nowhere and just swept me all the way back to 18th century France. I got abducted by a bunch of crazy Frenchmen who wanted my head cut off, but then you came along with Minnie's grandson Frederick and he saved me by talking a bunch of brilliant nonsense to them." She stopped her ramblings and stared at her grandfather with a look of astonishment on her face. "It was so weird." She muttered, noticing the peculiar look Wilf was giving her.

"Don't tell me, it wasn't a dream." She concluded grimly.

"No I am afraid not." Wilf answered, handing her the bowl and a wooden spoon.

Donna shook her head to clear her thoughts. "Where is the Doctor?" She asked.

"You remember him." Wilf nodded, visibly relieved. "Oh that's good. He said you might not completely remember everything because the transfer took place right when that Timewarp thing started to work. I was worried."

"Of course I remember the Doctor." Donna replied, her eyes shimmering. "I can remember everything we've done together! Davros, the Oods, the people of Pompeii. Even the meta-crisis. How could I ever forget, it was the most amazing year of my life."

"Oh that's wonderful." Wilf responded, his eyes tearing up. "Oh Donna, you've no idea how happy I am for you."

"Now come on then." Donna said, producing a smile. "Where is he? We can't be in middle of the French revolution without the Doctor having something to do with it. Where is that skinny spaceman? Is he hiding somewhere?" She gazed expectantly at the shady figure standing behind her granddad.

"I am afraid I have to disappoint you, but he's not going to leap out of the corner and shout "surprise!" any time soon." The Master commented, revealing himself to her with a smirk.

"Frederick?" Donna muttered.

The Master crossed his arms over his chest. "My name, is the Master, and you better stop calling me Frederick, or I'll have to gag you again."

"The apple? That was you?" Donna asked, almost taking an instant dislike to him. "You stuck it in my mouth like I am a roosted pig?"

Wilf hesitantly raised his hand. "Actually, it was me. Sorry sweetheart. He wanted to stuff a piece of dirty rag in your mouth. I didn't want you to get germs. This was a little better."

"So." Donna concluded while studying the Master. "It was really you who saved me from the mad Frenchmen. But if you're not Frederick, who are you and why are you here with gramps?"

"I am a companion of the Doctor." He grudgingly admitted, oh how low he had sunk to be forced to declare this to a human. "A Timelord, just like him."

"That's funny, he never mentioned any other Timelords before."

"Yeah well, we weren't exactly on speaking terms when you were traveling with him. Although it would only be respectful not to mention anything about me when you were around, considering I was dead at the time."

"You what?" Donna exclaimed, knitting her brows together.

"It's a long story luv." Wilf shushed. "Just try not to exert yourself too much right now. You're still recovering." And urged her to try the porridge. Noticing that Wilf was going to be busy taking care of his granddaughter, the Master turned around and headed for the door.

"Hey." Wilf called out to him. The Master had already grabbed the bald man's coat from the hook and was putting it on. "Are you going out? Didn't you just say that we should stay put till at least it gets dark?"

"I said that _she _should stay put." The Master pointed at Donna while he popped a broad rimmed hat that he had found upstairs on his head. "She sticks out like a sour thumb in that dress. The plebs in the street are convinced she's royalty, and won't hesitate to drag her up the scaffold again."

"And you? Aren't you afraid you might get recognized?" Wilf said.

"Trust me. That won't be a problem." The Master told him, and went outside.

'Don't kill anyone! I won't have it!" Wilf shouted after him, noticing a bit too late the horrified look on Donna's face.

"Gramps, if this is some kind of joke, it isn't funny." Donna said, putting the bowl down.

"Donna my dear." Wilf sighed. "I might have to explain a few things to you before he gets back."

Wilf came to sit down next to her, and prepared himself for a very long story to tell.

The streets were even more crowded in the late afternoon, and the Master, by now allergic to the odorous presence of the average French farmer, had to use his cat-like flexibility to avoid too much physical contact with any of them. He managed to arrive at the market place mostly untouched, and went through the stalls quickly. There were merchants trying to sell all sorts of vegetables in different states of decomposition, while the stalls with warm meat and fish were stinking up the entire street. The most obnoxious of all were the onions sellers, who were incredibly numerous and were venting their putrid bulbs on about every corner. Why this nation was so obsessed with these malicious earth tumors was beyond the Master's understanding. The only sane thing that occurred to him was that although everyone seemed to be selling them, no-one was actually buying any. There was no chance that he could pick up the Doctor's scent in this place, but as always with the Master, there were more ways leading to his destination. He just needed to keep his eyes open to find one road that was less traveled, not to mention less pungent.

"What are you looking for monsieur?" The stall-owner asked him. He was standing proudly behind his merchandise comprised of bottles and vats of wine.

It was half-luck and half-wisdom when the Master let his eyes fall on the emblem burnt into the wood of one of the vats. "Where does this one come from?" He asked, clearly recognizing the Infinity sign.

"This one? Oh that's from the Chateau Fontainebleau, right at the doorsteps of Versailles." The vendor told him. "You have excellent taste good sir." He praised, for he was eager to sell. "This is one of the finest whites in the region. Coming from the royal vineyards, it has graced the tables of the late king himself."

"Really." The Master mused, remembering the boring afternoons he had spent with the Doctor while going through the archives of the London Library. He never would have thought it would actually pay off. "I thought this was made by monks?" He said, trying to lure out more information.

"Um, yes. That's true." The stallholder grinned apolitically. "Although one should not judge the wine by its maker of course." He added quickly.

"What do you mean?"

"Oh, I thought you knew sir." Frankly, if he didn't thought the Master knew about the monks, he wouldn't have brought it up. Heck, it wasn't in his standard selling pitch to tell his costumers that this fine tasting white was made by a colony of lepers. "The Order of the Watcher sells under this label. They are all men with physical deformities, punished by God, but also gifted by Him to produce this most exquisite wine."

"Really? Do you know where I can find them?" The Master asked. The internal wheels of his mind were turning fast.

"Well, they usually show up in the early morning before the cockerel's call and sell their stuff at the market place on the corner of Rue Xavier near the bridge leading to the cathedral de Notre Dame. But they don't do private sales." He tried. "They only do wholesale, so if you want to buy some of this fine wine-"

"You know, on second thought, I'm not really that interested." The Master replied, and turned away to head back to the hideout. After all he had now gathered all the information that he needed. Inside his head, his neurons were firing round after round to put a vital plan together for tomorrow morning. He passed by a small group of children who had gathered around a run-down puppet theater and were enthusiastically cheering on the puppet players who appeared on stage.

"Ah, you merry people, come and see, come and see! The Punch and Judy show is here for your amusement." Piped a Mickey Mouse voice behind him. "Why you weary traveler, won't you spare some time and come and watch the show? I've checked the timetables and for now the Tardis is absolutely going nowhere. Not without the _Doctor_ that is."

The Master whirled around and stared right into the gaily-painted face of a miniature version of himself, complete with the black suit and tie combo that he favored during his time as the hated prime minister Harold Saxon. For a moment the Master's mind just stopped working by the sight of the little fellow, who beckoned him to come closer to his puppet palace.

"Oh come on you old nag. You used to love a bit of fun, why so serious now? Take a seat and let old Punch entertain you, that's a good lad." The Master puppet said with a content grin, as he watched how the Master walked over to the wooden bench and sat down like a man sleepwalking. The other puppets on stage started to cheer and dance, while somewhere hidden behind the merrily painted façade, an out of tune organ murdered what was supposed to a popular French Children song.

"You can't be real." The Master mumbled, fearing that, what he had long anticipated, had finally happened, and that he had now officially gone completely insane.

"Why, I am as real as you are, only you are slightly bigger." The little Master responded. "And I am far better dressed of course." He added vainly.

The Master swallowed a lump down his throat and glanced nervously around. The rest of the audience didn't seem to notice that one of the puppets was directly talking to him.

"Oh no, this is NOT happening. You're just inside my head." He shook, grinning crazily. "This must have something to do with the Doctor not being here. Some kind of delayed psychological panic reaction. There is no way I am talking to a puppet version of myself." He paused when Judy appeared on stage. With her blond sleek curls and doe-like eyes, and wearing a flaming red dress, she bore a cunning resemblance to Lucy, his to be deceased wife.

"I don't think I need to introduce her to you, now do I?" The puppet Master exclaimed enthusiastically, turning his painted lips upwards into a perfect smirk. He swirled around and took a swing at poor Lucy, giving her an instant black eye.

"Hey! Stop that!" The Master shouted, jumping up from his seat. "Don't you dare to touch her again you son of a bitch!" He hissed, meaning every word he said.

"What, you've suddenly turned into a hero now?" The puppet Master mocked, clapping in his wooden hands. "You saw Lucy last Christmas and you succeeded in murdering her a second time around. How is that for being a loving husband?"

"I didn't murder her." The Master answered, but the beady stare of the Lucy doll had reawakened his guilt. "I've tried to save her. I really did. I even offered Death my own life in exchange for hers."

"Yeah well, that was indeed kinda noble of you, but the point is, you_ failed_." The Master puppet replied, blowing a raspberry at him before he whirled around again and punched Lucy in her other eye. "You're a big fat failure. You couldn't save her, and you will not be able to save the other one either."

"What other one?" The Master stared furiously at the crazy little prick who kept going at poor Lucy till she curled up into a trembling little ball at one side of the stage. "Hey, stop hitting her!" Not being able to watch his tiny-self abuse the Lucy-doll any longer, he rushed forward and grabbed the hand that played the demonic Master puppet by the wrist.

"You're here to look for the Doctor." His puppet-self grinned. "But what you'll find is going to be so much more. In fact, it will be more than you can chew, old chum." And the puppet gave him a cocky little wink. "Better find her before it's too late."

"What are you talking about? Who should I find?" The Master said, tightening his grip.

"Your other wife." The Master puppet rolled his beady eyes at him to show his contempt. "The one with the pouty smile and the raven hair. The one you've left behind when your fantasy world of wish-full thinking and _should-have-beens_ blew up in smoke when Rachel whispered the truth into your ears. Don't you remember her?"

"Anne." Breathed the Master, feeling a chill stab his hearts. He was suddenly aware of the wild screams coming from behind the puppet theater.

"Let go of my hand you crazy maniac!" The puppeteer behind the stage yelled. The Master gazed down and realized that his angry grip had produced a nasty red print around the man's wrist, and that puppet he was attacking was no longer resembling Harold Saxon, but looked like a completely ordinary Punch doll with a hooked nose and harlequin outfit. He then gazed at the Lucy doll and saw that she also had transformed into what seemed to be a normal Judy puppet with rosy apple cheeks and bouncy flame red curls. Confused and very frightened, he let go of the man's hand and stepped aside, while the kiddies in the audience jeered loudly at him for interrupting their favorite show.

"You almost broke my wrist!" The puppeteer yelled. "If you don't like the show, just don't watch it!"

The Master backed away slowly while shaking his head, till his backside bumped into the first row of wooden benches. He swirled around and started to run as if the devil himself was following him on his heels.

**5.**

The small concession that descended down into the old roman vaults underneath the chateau consisted of one of the deformed monks, limping along in the lead with a torch in his hand to light their way. He was followed by the Doctor, who was frog-marched between the two horsemen, Antoine and Henri, who both kept their muskets near at hand in case their prisoner needed motivation. They passed through an arch into a wider chamber, where the torch's light revealed the wet ancient walls nearby, but left the walls further away obscured in complete darkness. By the way their footstep echoed through the underground area, the Doctor judged that the chamber could be quite vast. Antoine stepped forward, leaving Henri to guard their prisoner, and lifted a heavy metal plate in the floor that covered a circular hole, while the monk provided the necessary light.

"Here you go, your lordship." Antoine told the Doctor as he stepped aside. "Your chamber awaits you."

The Doctor, roughly encouraged by Henri who stuck the barrel of the musket in his back, nudged forward and stared down into the deep dark hole, before jumping back. "Ow that smell!" The Doctor commented, covering his nose and mouth in horror. "That's absolutely vile! What's down there? The collected waste of all of the good Citizens of Paris?"

"Close." Antoine grinned. "This is the old remaining cesspit in the chateau. Built around the same time by the Sun king, it contains at least a century worth of shit." He pushed the Doctor back to the front. "And you're going in."

The Doctor pulled a face as if to say you gotta be kidding me. "Ah come on, there must a better place to keep a prisoner than in there. This used to be a royal stronghold, aren't there any dungeons or towers, anything in that category?"

"Afraid not." Antoine told him with a nasty smirk. "Now either you get in the hole yourself, or we give you a hand and shove you in."

"Not much of choice, is it?" The Doctor complained, earning him another push from Antoine. It edged his feet once again a few centimeters closer to the hole.

"All right all right!" The Timelord yelled, raising his hands up in surrender. "I'll get in. No need to get touchy." The Doctor took his time to examine the pit for a while. He then leaned forward and gripped the opposite edge. Turning his head and taking a last relatively clean breath of air, he hiked his rump off the rim and swung down into the hole till he hung by the grip of his hands. He looked down, but couldn't see anything in that absolute darkness. The bottom of the pit could equally be three meter away or three hundred. The horrible stench that wafted up from the underground tunnel however, was so strong that it almost started to have its own color.

"Oops, watch your fingers!" Antoine mocked maliciously, and dropped the heavy slate back onto the pit, but before it could crush the Doctor's hands, he had already let go, dropping six meters down in free fall till he splashed into a swamp of waste that reached up to his waist. The smell was almost unbearable, and the Doctor tried hard to keep his arms and hands above the waistline. It might not be rational, but he really didn't want to touch anything down there. He stared up at the dim half moon rim of torchlight that shone above his head.

"Do make yourself comfortable Doctor." Antoine shouted down at him. "The Watcher won't demand your presence until the moon is full in two days time. But you won't be out of company though." He grinned "There bound to be big fat rats down there, and I will be coming back around six to drop dinner down on you."

"Oh please, let's skip that." The Doctor muttered, imaging the nauseating combination of food and whatever this stinking muddy stuff was in his mind's eye. "Besides, I rather have a pleasant conversation with the rats." He added defiantly. He watched how the underside of the metal plate shifted till the remaining light of the peek-hole disappeared and he was left in featureless and complete darkness.

**_TBC_**

If this story pleases you, please write a review or comment, it motivates to carry on with the entire series.


	4. Chapter 4

A big thanks to you all who have reviewed the previous chapters!

**Chapter 4**

**1.**

The Master knew how it felt to be haunted by dreams. He had experienced it almost every night for the last 2000 years ever since that vindictive bastard Rassilon was so very inconsiderate to remove the drums from him. It was a rare blessing if he could sleep one night through without being preyed upon by one. But ever since his last encounter with Lucy, he had suffered from the most horrid nightmares, stuff that his otherwise excellent memory had forgotten for a good reason, but were now resurfacing. All the putrid rotten mess at the bottom of his once dead conscience, floating up to the surface to poison his mind.

Sometimes, these bad dreams weren't always about his villainous past.

He found himself once again in the audience of the strange puppet show on the central market square, sitting on the wooden bench in the front row, while wild organ music piped cheerfully behind the stage. The public cheered when the tiny curtains were raised, and clapped enthusiastically when the Master puppet went on stage. The tailor-suited villain bowed graciously towards his fans with a content smile painted on his perfect round face. He clapped in his wooden hands when he saw the Master. "I knew you would be back!" He cheered enthusiastically. "You liked the first show so much that you came back to enjoy another round of spouse-abuse and domestic violence, hey?"

The Master tightened his jaw, but didn't fall for it this time.

"Oh well." The Master puppet said, a little disappointed that the Master wouldn't snap so easily again. "Lucy is not around today. I accidently dislodged her head when I tried to feed her into the butcher's grinder. She really needed a visit to the almighty toymaker. Now now, calm down, people!" He shushed, pouting his little lips, as the rest the audience loudly vocalized their disappointment.

"I know! Poor Lucy will be dreadfully missed by us all. However, it doesn't mean that we'll have to do without a proper punching-bag from now on." The Master puppet went behind the left wing and reappeared, holding a real-size handgun, which he waved at the puppet behind him, gesturing that he should get on stage.

"Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, humans and the occasional mad Timelord, let me present to you, the one and only truly valiant and completely huggable Timelord from Gallifrey, _the Doctor_!" The Master puppet cheered, and swung the barrel of the hand-musket in the other puppet's back, pushing him forward. The Master couldn't believe his eyes. There on the stage was a puppet version of the Doctor, complete with his ridiculous pointy hairdo and dark flexible eyebrows, flaunting around in his striped brown suit and long coat like he owned the place. He stared at the audience with wide happy eyes, completely oblivious of the fact that that there was a gun aimed at him.

"Say hallo to the kiddies, Doctor." The Master puppet grinned.

"Ello there!" The Doctor puppet waved with a chippy cheerfulness that was truly nauseating, and glanced around with a most moronic smile on his face. "I am the Doctor."

"Yes, we already know that." The Master and the Master puppet sighed, rolling their eyes almost in unison. Honestly, even for a dream this was a boring waste of time, the Master thought, but the audience around him loved it and cheered and laughed as if this was the most fun they had since they discovered how to get rid of Crabs. The Doctor puppet turned around and glanced shortly at the Master puppet before he turned back to the audience. He seemed to be about to address them, when he changed his mind and turned back to the other puppet Timelord.

"What is that?" He shouted, as if he had just noticed the bloody weapon. "Is that a gun? Are you pointing a gun at me?" The Doctor puppet rambled, more offended than he was worried. "Why are you pointing a gun at me? Are you crazy? Put that thing away!" He slapped with his wooden hand the barrel out of his face, but the Master puppet raised it back up again, aiming it at his hearts while he performed his second eye-roll in a minute, which must be, the real Master thought, a whole new record.

"This gun, you marshmallow brain _idiot_, is completely necessary, because this is my only insurance that you're going to do exactly as I say." The Master puppet whispered in a low, dangerous voice. Combined with that sudden sinister look that appeared on that cute round face, it made him resemble an evil demonic doll from a cheap horror flick, but the Doctor puppet wasn't the least impressed.

"Put that thing out of my sight." He corrected him, and forced it down.

"No." The Master puppet objected, and raised it back up again.

"Yes." And the gun was down.

"No!" And the gun was up again.

"Yes!"

"No! No! No! No!" Whined the little Master, like a kid who wasn't allowed to play with his favorite toy.

"Yes yes yes yes!" Responded the Doctor puppet, who was like the Master, rapidly regressing into a six year old. "Yes to the infinite! HA!"

"No to the infinite plus one!" The Master puppet grinned slyly.

The real flesh-and-blood Master yawned endlessly. If he wanted to re-experience a domestic quarrel with the Doctor, he could have just as well stayed awake and reminisce his long list of heated arguments that he had with him ever since he woke up from his catatonic state. The really annoying thing about this was that even in his dreams, that bothersome twat was still trying his best to correct him, even if he was but 30 cm tall and had a hand stuck up his cotton ass. The humans though, just loved it and laughed their stupid heads off.

On stage, the two of them wrestled with the gun till the Master puppet accidentally pulled the trigger and fired a loud shot. A man in the audience suddenly stopped laughing immediately and dropped back from the bench with a look of stupendous cheer still frozen on his face. The real life Master glanced over at him with the same interest one would muster for a news report of a deadly accident in some far-away country and sighed miserably. That was the whole problem with live show acts like these. There was just no remote control to fast-forward the real insufferable bits.

"Oops." The Master puppet chirped. "Sorry old man, butter fingers."

"You shot him!" The Doctor puppet was, as to be expected from the little twat, completely horrified. "You shot the man, and now he's dead! I told you not to swing that gun around! You cannot even be trusted using the microwave, let alone a bloody weapon!"

"Well that's because it never works, even when do you follow the instructions." The Master puppet objected, shaking his head at the Doctor. "It's a rubbish invention anyway, everything you put in turns out either too cold, too hot, too wet or too dry. It's simply not made to prepare food." The Master puppet concluded.

"Oh am so sorry." The Doctor puppet said to the dead man in the audience, turning really sad. "I truly am."

"Yeah, let's drop the drama shall we?" The Master puppet opted, putting the gun out of sight after deciding that they had played enough with it for now. "I didn't bring you into the show to express your sincere condolence to one of my freak accidents." He rested his wooden finger on his painted lips for a second, as if in contemplation. "Doctor, I have a problem."

"Oh, you do?" The Doctor swung around. "Do you need my help?" He asked, a bit too eagerly.

The Master puppet bowed his head in what seemed to be utter embarrassment and gave the tiniest of nods.

"Oh that's good!" Chirped the Doctor. "I love to help! I am good at helping. Absolutely brilliant at it! Now tell me, what's wrong?"

"Well…" The other Timelord puppet hesitated.

"Come on. You can tell me." The Doctor puppet said, looking at him kindly. "We've been traveling together for years now. There are no secrets between us." He encouraged.

"It's my head, Doctor. Lately I've been suffering from such headaches." The Master puppet complained. "I had them before, actually I had them quite often, when the drums were still around, but I though I was better now. Well, you said I was better." He gazed accusingly at the Doctor, unconsciously and irrationally blaming his illness on him. "You said the drums made me ill and that I was better off without them."

"And you are." The Doctor studied him worriedly. "When did it start?"

"Ever since we brought Rachel back, I had them occasionally, but it really got worse after we met up with Lucy last Christmas." It seemed impossible, but the color on the wooden puppet's face became as pale as a sheet of paper. "I can no longer sleep. Every night I lay awake, my head pulsing with pain, and if by mercy I do find sleep there is no comfort in it. I dream Doctor." The Master whispered, his eyes haunted by memories. "The most horrid nightmares come to find me, the relics of my past lives, the dust of the bones of my victims who I have crushed underneath my feet." He shook his head warily before he stared up at him. "Why can it not just be forgotten? I've done all you've asked of me and still…I cannot find peace."

The Doctor stared back him with kindness shining in his eyes, and he was fully determined to help his friend. "Come here." He said. "Let me take a look."

A memory flashed through the real Master's mind. It was a mercilessly cold winter night of a Christmas long ago, and both exhausted after their initial stand off, they lay sprawled out over the floor of an abandoned warehouse. The Doctor, still heavily injured, but so very determined to help, allowed the Master to share his nightmare mind with him. And as the Master took his head between his cold, trembling hands, and guided him to his own, he remembered thinking that whatever the Doctor may find, and whatever may happen afterwards, at least there would now be someone in the universe who understood him, and who had shared in his suffering, even if was only for one short moment in time.

For the puppets, this magic moment of bonding perhaps didn't quite happen.

"HA!" The Doctor cheered in a pantomime manner. "I know what's going! You have a very bad case of woodworm!"

"Wood-what?" The Master puppet said, cocking a serious eyebrow at the Doctor. He clearly did not expect this.

"Wood-worm." The Doctor puppet replied, and knocked on the Master's head a few times. "Or better still, wood-_worms_, plural, you've got what they call in semi-medical terms a real maggot-noggin." He smiled, content about his own brilliant diagnosis. "You've got wriggly wormey things tunneling inside your brain. That's what's causing the headache and probably the nightmares as well."

"How do they get inside my head?" The Master puppet asked.

"Well you're not going to be glad to hear this, but it is your known stupid fault really." The Doctor puppet replied, hopping up and down nervously. "It's what you get when you decide to take the right of existence in your own hands and plot your revenge behind my back. You end up killing the one true friend you ever had." The Doctor paused. His expression had suddenly turned grim and ominous.

"I didn't kill you." The real Master whispered, clearly upset by the revelation.

"Oh, but you will." The Doctor turned to him, no longer a doll made of wood and cotton, but a man of flesh and blood. "And after that happens, I won't be there anymore to protect you."

The real Doctor faded into the darkness, and the Master woke up, not in his own bed on board of the Tardis, but lying tied down on a hospital cot with his arms crossed over his chest, and secured tightly within the unyielding fabric of a straightjacket. He glanced around in panic. He found himself in an operation theater, surrounded by bleeping machines that monitored his every vital parameter. His head was secured inside a metal cage, and he could not turn nor speak or even blink. Above his head, an IV bag with a green substance dripped lazily down into a tube that was connected into his own bi-circulatory system.

A woman loomed over him, her face showing very little sympathy for his plight, if anything, she appeared bitter and vindictive.

"There you are." River Song said. "All prepared."

The Master grunted when he saw her slowly screw off the lid from a small glass vial. The content inside wriggled and crawled impatiently, like a colony of dark nimble fingers with razor-sharp teeth.

Knowing very well what they were and realizing what she was about to do to him, the Master fearfully shook his head at her, begging her silently with his eyes to stop. River only smiled.

"Oh it's a little bit too late for that, don't you think?" She held the vial right above his right eye, and slowly tilted it to let the creatures slide through the opening. Like a thick drop of oil, they clung onto the rim for a moment, before they let go of the thinning threads of slime and dropped right into the Master's eye. He fought against his bonds when the creatures crawled inside his tear-duct, leaving a trail of agonizing inflamed flesh in their wake, and screamed inwardly as they ate their way into his brain tissue, severing neurons, and mauling through his cortex like maggots tunneling through a corpse. And as he was suffering, River Song kept smiling down coldly at him, and savored every moment, every instance of his agony, just like Rassilon once had through the blackened bars of his burning prison.

He struggled awake, trembling all over and bathing in sweat. With his eyes wild and fearful, he took in the shadows of his unfamiliar surroundings.

He was lying underneath a moist and hot blanket on a straw mattress in the kitchen of a French townhouse that was close to falling apart.

Recent memories started to resurface. Worn out by his nightmare, the Master sat upright and wiped his hand over his face to calm himself. He glanced over at Wilf and Donna, who were both lying peacefully asleep in front of the open fireplace. _How I envy these humans,_ he thought bitterly. He would give up everything just to own that one precious moment of peace in the night. He then shook his head tiredly to clear the last memories of his eternal boogeyman from his mind.

_Rassilon._

A bitter grin crossed his lips. Even now, his venerable lordship was still tormenting him from beyond his cold dark grave.

He waited in silence for a while till the light that came through the tiny kitchen window turned a hint of dark blue. He than stood up, walked over to Donna and kicked her in the backside. "Wake up, both of you!" He grunted. Although they still had two hours left before the break of dawn, there was some spiteful gratification in forcing these two humans to get up unnecessarily early. If he was not allowed to rest, no-one else in his chagrin company was going to enjoy a good night sleep.

"Oh you gotta be kidding me. It's still the middle of the night." Donna complained as she gazed sleep-drunkenly around, before she cuddled back against her granddad again.

"I said, move your lazy asses! " The Master told her and tossed a bundle of clothes to her. "And get out of that dress you're wearing, it's just screaming to the mob to get you killed."

"Where we are we going?" Wilf asked, rubbing the sleep from his eyes.

"We're going to pay a visit to the market." The Master answered. He flung the cloak over his shoulders and fastened the cords underneath his chin.

"The market? But that's not open yet, is it?" Donna asked. She knew from her own weekend visits to the London farm-markets that they could start quite early, but this was so ridiculous early that if she had been London, this was the time of the day when the last drunks still needed to get pried off their stools and be kicked out of the pubs.

"You know what they say about early birds." The Master said, faking a smile. "And what's better in the morning than having a big fat juicy worm for breakfast, hey?"

**2.**

The three of them ventured outside after the Master had locked the owner of the house away in the cellar, and had made a promise to Wilf to not beat him up too badly. Outside in the fresh morning air, Paris was largely devoid of human activity, with the good citizens of the French capital still fast asleep, leaving the alley cats and sewer rats to dominate the streets.

"Why are we heading for the marketplace? Is that were we can find the Doctor?" Donna asked, trying hard to keep up with the Master.

"I've got some information where he might be." The Master said, grumpily giving in to answer her. He didn't want to explain too much, fearing it might encourage her to ask more. Ever since he had rescued that woman, she had been talking his ears off, constantly firing questions at him like a demented red parrot. Although Wilfred had been posing the same kind of no-brainer inquiries, it somehow was vastly more irritating that the loudmouth redhead was now doing it. It probably had something to do with Donna's total incapacity to even notice how bothered he was with her.

"Yeah, but how do you know for sure this is going to lead us to him?" Donna continued. "Gramps told me how clever you are, but still..."

_I am not the Doctor._ The Master finished her sentence in his thought. Oh how he hated it to be compared to his goodie-goodie two-shoes companion. "Look, if I could have picked up the Doctor's scent in this well-used but unflushed toilet bowl of a decade, I would have long since done so, but alas, I cannot trace him by smell, and have to reply on my wit to bring us to him. I just know this is going to work because your granddad is right, my brain does function on a vastly higher plane than yours, so you better shut up and just follow my well-considered plan instead of doubting its rationality, understood?" He leaned into her, his eyes blazing.

Donna wisely pressed her lips into a white line in response.

"Good." He muttered, turning around and assuming that the subject was now closed.

"Okay. All right. Let me get this straight." Donna tried, following the Master on his heels. "The Doctor can smell you. And you can smell him?"

Donna stared at the Master with a look if she had just opened the fridge after a month of being on holiday to find a strange fury growth on the bottom of the vegetable larder.

"You mean really properly smell him? Even when you're miles away? Like some sort of spaceman pheromone?"

A few meters in front of her, the Master shut his eyes and groaned inwardly.

"Well, that's kinda…" Donna paused, trying to find a fitting word for it. "Weird…isn't it?" She actually wanted to say suspicious, but somehow managed not to. "I mean, two grown men, sniffing each-other, sensing each-other's presence, that's just a little bit…disturbing really."

"That's what I said." Wilf pointed out.

"That's probably because the both of you share one communal brain-cell. It's only such a shame that you can never quite find out whose turn it is to use the poor little walnut." The Master sneered.

"Well I was just asking. No need to get all cynical." Donna said lightheartedly. Although Wilf had told her everything he knew about the Master's past, she wasn't afraid of him, and she was still blissfully unaware of how dangerous his mood-swings can be. It was just too impossible for her to imagine that this man, who she had saved from the rhino-head aliens and who had rescued her in turn from the sinister mister Fox, who had restored her memory of the good Doctor, and plucked her out of the clutches of a blood-thirsty French mob, could be in any way capable to do her harm.

"The Doctor and I used to have these sort of silly conversations." She shrugged, and smiled when a fond memory came up in her mind. "Once we argued all the way to the 11th solarsystem of Gondwarnia, because the he didn't want to admit that Myspace is really useful to keep in touch with friends you don't really want to keep in touch with. Still, you have to be careful of course. You will not believe what kind of things people put up on the internet nowadays." Donna rambled on. "I had this friend of mine called Nerys, well…sort of friend, we're really not that close and sometimes I just hate her guts, but she bought a webcam to chat with her boyfriend online and…"

"Donna my dear, maybe you shouldn't talk to him for a while." Wilf tried, reading the poisonous look from the Master's face as a final warning.

They finally reached the market square. To the aggravated Master, this wasn't a second too early.

The square was empty, except for a few stands that were left behind from the previous day, but were cleared from any merchandise for obvious reasons. Slippery piles of rotting fish guts and decomposing vegetables that had finally reached the point of being unsellable were also left behind, scattered over the cobble stones with a few fat rats scuttling through them. Like in daytime, the horrid smell that hung around this place was enough to make the Master's eyes water.

"What are we looking for?" Wilf asked, glancing over at the Master, who put his finger on his lips.

"Patience." He muttered, moving his companions behind a corner of a nearby warehouse to get of sight. "Our ride will be here soon."

A few moments later, just when a black cockerel nesting in a nearby bell-tower had appeared on the roof and ruffled its feathers to prepare himself for his first call, the sound of hooves clattering on the road cut through the morning fog. A large cart pulled by two dark horses appeared through the stone archway that led up to the city's square. Two hooded figures dressed in plain robes stepped off. They looked like monks. They knocked on the door of a nearby inn and talked shortly to the man who answered. Then they returned to the cart and started to unload the cargo, rolling huge wine barrels down a wooden ramp into the town house, and came back with equally large vats that no longer seemed full, for they were carried easily by each of the men onto the cart. When they were finally finished, they covered the barrels with a large white canvas and entered to house to finish the transaction. This was the moment the Master had been waiting for. He beckoned the humans to follow him while he sneaked pass the inn and climbed on the back of the cart.

"Get on." he whispered, offering Wilf a hand to help him up. "Quickly, before they get back."

Donna followed after her granddad, and as soon as she had clambered on, the hooded men reappeared. One of them threw a leather pouch that jingled with coins in the air before he put it away carefully.

"Move to the front." The Master whispered urgently and dove under the canvas.

Wilf and Donna went underneath as well and crawled behind him, moving carefully in order not to blow their cover, till they reached the Master who sat half-hiding behind a stack of empty barrels.

"Now what?" Donna asked, getting irritated that the Master was not revealing much of his so-called plan.

"Now we sit and wait." The Master simply stated.

It took not long before they heard the crack of the whip from one of the men on the driver's box. The horses started to pull the cart away from the market square, taking the three stowaways with them to a yet unknown destination.

**3.**

The cart drove up to Chateau Fontainebleau two hours later, and crossed the courtyard to get to the stables at the back of the magnificent main house. After the cart had entered the building and as soon as the horses had come to a full standstill, the Master and Donna jumped out from underneath the cover and each went for one of the men sitting on the box. Donna had found a shovel in the back of the cart, and put it to a good use. She smashed it on the side of the head of the first monk, who dropped forward and tumbled to the straw coated floor. The Master, however, didn't have a weapon, but took the second man's head in his bare hands and with a violent twist, broke his neck. He then kicked the lifeless body of his victim off the cart, breathing in deep in relief that they had succeeded in disposing them without raising alarm.

For moment, Donna stood frozen with the shovel still in her hands. A look of horror was etched on her face. "What did you do?" She gasped. "You snapped his neck."

The Master glared at her, not truly understanding what the fuss was about. "Yeah. _And_?"

"He's dead." Donna said. "You_ killed _him!"

"Well that was the plan. To dispose of them. Didn't you kill yours?"

"Of course not!" Donna answered, appalled by the very question.

The Master grunted. If you wanted to get things done around here, you better spare your breath and go do it yourself. He jumped off the wagon and stooped over the unconscious monk, lifted his head from the floor and with one clean sweep, twisted his neck till he heard a reassuring crack. Donna pressed her hand against her mouth to dampen her scream, while the Master whirled around and looked at her with a most puzzled expression on his face.

"Is the coast clear?" Wilf asked, and slowly emerged from underneath the cover. "Do you need any help?"

"It's done." The Master told him. "You can get out of there now."

"There was no need." Donna told the Master, her eyes were glistening. "These men were unarmed!"

A vindictive grin appeared on the Master's lips when he finally realized what this was all about. "Oh of course. You're not used to all this bloodshed with the Doctor. Both of you." He gazed at Wilf who had stepped off the back of the cart and was gazing down at the two bodies with a remorseful look on his face.

"Well let's just say that I have an entirely different method of operation. So get used to it!" He added heartlessly, and showed her a big fat smile.

"This isn't a plan. This is murder." Donna objected fiercely. "And you're laughing about it." She stared at the Master in disbelief. "Is a human life nothing more than a joke to you?"

"Look, I did what I needed to do." The Master said. "These men would have sounded alarm as soon as they regained consciousness, and keeping them as prisoners would have been a great pain in the ass. This was the most logical solution."

Donna pressed her lips tightly together and shook her head. "The Doctor wouldn't have done this. Never." She told him with conviction in her eyes.

"Oh the _Doctor_!" The Master mocked, and spun around, quickly loosing his temper with her. "The good and moral Doctor, of course." He slapped his forehead with a flat hand. "You know what, the Doctor got his saintly ass kidnapped by a bunch of men who just tried to murder your granddad and me and would probably not think twice to put a fine bullet hole in that red head of yours, so how is that for compassion?" He came real close to her, his anger radiating heat from his skin. Who the hell did she think she was to judge him?

"Anything else to say, Donna Noble?" He told her, his dark eyes piercing into her soul.

Suddenly frightened, Donna shook her head and looked away.

"Thought so." The Master muttered, he turned around and walked back to the bodies. Wilf sat crouched down next to one, and had pulled up the men's hood to reveal their faces. They were heavily deformed by illness and extremely old age, but still, the gentle old man could not help himself from feeling sorry for them.

He gazed up at the Master. "All these years." He said, holding his grey eyes accusingly on him. "All this time that you've spend traveling with the Doctor. Didn't you learn anything from him, anything at all?"

The Master tightened his jaw and sucked in a deep breath, but otherwise remained silent. He took out the Doctor's sonicscrewdriver, and studied the deformed faces closely. Lifting the hood further up with the sonic, he noticed the Infinity symbol that was carved into their foreheads. It had left them marked with a large putrefying scar.

"What are you doing?" Wilf asked, watching how the Master switched on the sonic and whirred it over the faces of the deceased men. "What, is dead not good enough for you? You want to disfigure them as well?"

"Look at them." The Master said, while he continued to scan them over. "They already got faces that only their dear mothers can love. Now what can I ever do to make it worse." He was finished and switched off the sonic before punching in a couple of buttons to set it to function 28. "No, I need to make imprints of their facial structures so I can create the perfect shimmer."

"What's a shimmer?" Donna asked, but her granddad already knew and was moving a couple of paces away from the Master. He slowly raised his hands when the Timelord approached him with the sonic aimed at his chest.

"Is it going to hurt?" Wilf asked warily.

"Only if you want me to." The Master replied with a grin, and switched on function 28.

**4.**

Although its original purpose was to serve as a mere hunting lodge for the Sun king, the chateau was vast, with long corridors that connected the left and right wings with the main-house building. For two intruders who had never set foot here before, this enormous place with its kaleidoscope of quarters, ball-rooms, and hallways was a confusing maze in which they easily lost their way.

"I can't believe he did this to us." Donna whispered to her granddad. They were crossing a corridor that was made to resemble the great hall of mirrors at Versailles. On their left, there was an endless row of mirrors that caught their reflections as they walked by. The shimmers that the Master had provided worked perfectly. Both Donna and Wilf looked exactly like the dead monks in the stable, and it had actually given them an awful fright when they first caught sight of themselves in the mirrors. Donna studied the bulbous nose and the red, inflamed wounds on the corner of her lips. She found it incredibly weird that whenever she made a movement, that this old and festering body would just follow her actions as if it was her own.

"Why do we get to look like Golemn after he has crawled out of mount Doom? He didn't even shimmer himself!" Donna complained, lowering the hood over the hideous face so she didn't have to see it all the time.

"Well, we had only two monks to replace." Wilf tried, although he must admit that he himself had great trouble to follow the Master's dubious rationality.

"And he just ran off without us. Without even a word of explanation what we should do. He's not really into teamwork, is he?"

"He told us to keep our eyes and ears open."

"Yeah but for what? What are we supposed to find out?" Donna exclaimed, growing ever more wary of the Master's strange tactics. "Even if we did come to know where the Doctor is, where are we supposed to find him? He didn't say anything about where we should meet up again."

Wilf just shrugged. He could give him a ring but he had left his one and only decent jacket in the Tardis. But he wasn't that worried. He had dealt with the Master before. Perhaps that's why he could bring up a little more faith in the seemingly reckless Timelord than his granddaughter could. "Don't worry too much dear. He will probably just show up when the time is right."

"I sincerely doubt it." Donna sighed. Her heart leaped into her throat when a man shouted at her behind her back. Glancing nervously at Wilf, they both slowly turned around. Antoine was standing at the entrance of the mirror hall, and was gazing at the two hooded brethren with a look of discontent.

"Brother Mathieu and brother Alphonse, where have you been?" He asked, raising his chin up as he approached.

Donna took a deep breath to calm her nervous heart. "We just came back from the stables sir." She replied in what she hoped was a steady voice. "We went to the city to sell the wine, like every morning."

"I know you two went to town for the delivery." Antoine answered. "I've sent you myself because brother Arnaud claimed he was down with the flu." He came closer and studied the monks for a moment, without knowing he was putting Donna's and Wilf's sweat-glands hard at work. "Why aren't you both at the chapel?" He asked, and Donna noticed how he brushed his hand over the butt of his musket that hung from his belt. "You were supposed to sell the wine and get back right away. Why did you delay?"

"We didn't." Donna shook her head, fervently trying to make up a plausible excuse. "We lost the money." She blurted out.

"You what?" Antoine grabbed her by her robe and lifted her from the ground.

"No no no! We didn't really lose it. We dropped it on the road and we had to go back to look for it, but we retrieved it! Didn't we?" Donna gazed desperately down at Wilf, who hurried to produce a small pouch of coins.

"Here it is, now let him go!" Wilf said. He recognized that scar, recalling that this was the gunman who had shot at him and the Master, and it made him fear for Donna's life.

"It's a little light." Antoine remarked as he took the bag of coins and weighed it in his hand, but to Wilf's great relief, he did let go of Donna.

"Well, that's all we got for it. People these days are turning every penny before they are willing to part with it. Hard times hey." Wilf told him, hoping that he sounded convincing enough.

"I'll take this to the treasury." Antoine grinned, and pocketed the coins away. "You two. Hop along now and join the others in the chapel. You wouldn't want to be late for the morning mass. The Watcher is an exceptional masochistic mood."

"Right away sir!" Wilf answered, and dragged Donna away from the scary gunman.

"The other way!" Antoine told him, suppressing a sigh. "The chapel is in the east wing. No wonder you're late. You both have the directional sense of a bunch of three year old toddlers."

"Right sir!" Wilf repeated, heading the way Antoine had pointed out while pulling Donna behind him.

"What is this morning mass thing?" Donna breathed. "These guys don't look like the religious type to me. Well, at least not your normal type of religion anyway." She added, for she could clearly imagine them busy drawing pentagrams on the floor and sacrificing chickens in order to raise the devil or something.

"I have no idea, but we better go and have a look." Wilf answered. Now if he could just find his way to the chapel.

**5.**

Meanwhile, in an entirely different part of the complex, the Master was roaming the abandoned quarters. Without a shimmer, he was relying on stealth alone, although he did have shortly considered asking one of the human companions to turn him into a cat again. But then he realized that in case he didn't find the Doctor in time, he had to rely on the Donna or Wilf to turn him back. He wouldn't trust the old man or the redhead with an ordinary screwdriver, let alone the Doctor's sonic. So he had dismissed that idea and filed it under the "bone-head" category, which left him only his trusted Timelord nose to sniff out the whereabouts of the Doctor. It puzzled him greatly that he could not find his scent. If the other Timelord was indeed held captive by the Order of Watcher, he should be here. No doubt he was probably dwelling in the less posh rooms, but there was not even a trace of him to be detected. All he could pick up was the frail sickening odor of stale urine and ancient human waste that came wafting through the floorboards.

He dived behind the curtains when he heard footsteps approach. Glaring through a gap in the fabric, he saw a young woman in a pink French dress swoop by, her blond hair covered by a long gauge veil. The Master's hearts stopped beating when he caught a glance at her face. He knew those piercing green cat eyes and that will-full look. He had kissed those soft velvet lips so many times in a previous life.

"Anne." He whispered, and the phantom image of her standing underneath the tree of Transcendence appeared in his mind's eye, while he recalled what the eerie puppet version of himself had told him.

"_Your other wife. The one you've left behind when your fantasy world of wish-full thinking and should-have-beens blew up in smoke when Rachel whispered the truth into your ears. Better to find her before it's too late."_

He was mesmerized and confused by her presence, and his current mission was forgotten for a moment. He had to find out why she was here.

Like a man obsessed he went after her. He followed her, synchronizing his steps so she would not hear him approach, and hid behind statues and dived around the corner as soon as she gazed back in his direction. She went up a flight of stairs and moved to a more secluded part of the west wing, where she disappeared inside a room. The Master, after making sure that there was no-one ner, tried the door. It wasn't locked, and he slipped inside soundlessly. As soon as he had entered, he turned the lock. Anne stood in her bedroom in front of the window that overlooked the courtyard. When she turned around and saw the Master, her eyes grew wide and she opened her mouth just when he reached out and pressed his hand against her lips to silence her screams. While Anne struggled, he forced her backwards till she stood against the vanity.

"Sit down." The Master ordered her, his voice kept to a whisper. "Do as I say and I promise that I won't hurt you."

Anne followed his orders and sat down on the plush stool while she stared at him with fear in her eyes. The Master took a long scarf from the table and used it to gag her. Then he tore a long strip from her veil and bound her hands behind her back.

"Now." He sighed, and lowered himself till they met at eyelevel. "Look at you." He muttered, astonished that his vision had turned to flesh, and gently brushed his hand over her soft cheeks.

"You look exactly like I remember you." He whispered, caught in a rare moment in which he gave in to his hearts. Anne sat frozen on the spot, her whole body tensed as she followed his movements with sheer dread. The Master, realizing that he was scaring the girl senseless, retreated his hand, and kept it by his side while balding it into a tight fist.

"What are you doing here?" He asked, letting reason to regain control. "Who are you?" He studied her for a moment in contemplation. You're the blond bride who replaced Donna at the wedding." He concluded correctly. Anne shook her head and begged with her eyes for her release.

"Oh no." The Master said, wagging his finger at her. "Oh no no no no. I know that look. If you're anything like the Anne I knew you're not going to make it easy for me." He took a chair and sat down opposite to her with a knowing smile on his face. "As soon as I remove that gag, you're gonna scream. You're gonna make sure that you'll be heard by the others, and you're gonna spit and bit until you can fight yourself free. Am I right?"

The pleading look in Anne's eyes quickly faded, and was replaced by a determined, livid gaze.

"That's my girl." The Master said admiringly. "Never go down without a fight."

Anne mumbled something incomprehensible behind her gag that the Master trusted could hardly be anything flattering. There had to be a way to get some answers from her without risking blowing his cover or losing a finger.

"Right." He rubbed in his hands to warm them up. "Close your eyes and clear your mind, then it might not hurt too much." Anne flinched when he placed his fingers on her temples and shut his eyes. Anne and the Master gasped in unison when the mental link rushed into existence, bridging between the Master's memories and that of hers.

He was walking through her memories. Even in her short 38 years of life, there were many. Some ugly, some wonderful, but all precious, but what stood out was one in particular.

It was the last night she had spent in the tower of London alone, right before her execution.

She had let her ladies in waiting dress her up in her black execution gown well before dawn. Left on her own, she had stayed up the entire night, gazing occasionally out of the tiny barred window of her prison cell, waiting for the lights to return in the east.

After witnessing so many of her friends and kinsmen succumb to the executioner's blade, her fighting spirit was long since extinguished. She also no longer believed in the salvation of her own soul, not after she had realized that she had the blood of the innocent who had been dragged down with her in her downfall on her hands. The only thing she had left to pray for, was that Henri would forgive her for her so-called sins, and treat their daughter Elizabeth kindly. She truly cherished the one thing she had left of her daughter, the small silver locker that contains a portrait of her sweet baby-girl.

It was in the first hours after midnight, when she was ruefully staring at the tiny picture of Elizabeth, that a knock came at her door. She turned around, and told who she presumed was one of the guards that it was not yet dawn and that she still had every right to be left at peace. A second knock came. Followed by two more, but there was no sound of a turning key that followed, and no-one entered the room. Finally, she stood up and approached most guardedly.

"Who's there?" Anne asked. "Speak to me! I beseech you!" Her invisible visitor replied with four loud bangs that gave her an awful fright. Fed up with this torment, she peeked through the keyhole to see who was playing such a cruel game on her in her final hours. Outside, the torchlight revealed a deserted corridor. There was no-one there. Not even a shadow. Anne's breath stalled when the four knocks returned, louder than before, shaking the wooden panel in front of her.

"Anne Boleyn." A cold and dark voice whispered through the keyhole. "Do you fear death?"

She scrambled back, fearing that the devil himself had come to claim her, and watched with dread how a thin sliver of black smoke came through the keyhole into the small prison chamber. It moved towards her, curling like a snake around a pole. It elongated to form a ghostly skeletal claw. She took a deep breath of air, and noted the foul smell of burnt flesh and dusty ashes lingering around the frightful vision.

"Tell me!" The voice ordered her. "Are you afraid to die?"

Anne's suppressed a scream when the claw extended towards her and brushed over her cheek. It felt so incredible cold, as if she was touched by frost.

"Answer me human child!" The voice roared.

"Yes!" Anne cried out. "Yes I am! Now please, wandering spirit, I beg of you, leave me to my wretched self."

"Foolish queen! If I would grant you your wish I would send you off to meet your greatest fear." The voice replied. "However, if I decide to act." The claw moved over her silver locker, and for moment, the portrait of her sweet child was hidden in a cloud of white shimmering mist. When it retreated, it revealed a white pearl, perfectly round in shape. It sat on the one half of the locker, glistening to her as if it had just emerged out of the retreating waves. "I will give life." The voice told her, and the dark smoke swirled around his gift like the foam of restless sea. "Take it. Take my gift to you, queen Anne of England, and you will not die…"

Anne stared at the gleaming sphere that seemed to be emmit an unnatural bright light. Although she feared this strange but magnificent vision, she also had nothing left too lose. Slowly she extended her hand into the glow.

"Take my gift my human bride, my royal companion, listen to my voice and hear it call out to you over the stars. Take it, and from now on, let me be your Lord and master."

"Yes." Anne closed her fingers around the pearl. "Yes." She shut her eyes and let his melodious call enter her, a strange rhythm of four sequential taps. The ancient heart beat of the universe. "Please, save me! Milord! Please save my life!"

The lights that swirled around the pearl lying in her hand grew brighter till she was blinded by it, and could no longer see the gray walls of her prison. Then it swallowed her whole.

The Master let go of her, pulling back his hands as if he had just been burnt. "That can't be true." He shook his head in horror, trying to forget what he had just heard, but the sound of the drums kept ringing inside his ears.

"No! Not you! Why you? Why did it chose you?"

Anne looked equally shocked, and tried desperately to remove her gag. In an act of panic, the Master pulled it down her chin and watched wretchedly how Anne took in a deep breath of air. To his surprise she didn't scream for help, and then he realized.

"You looked into my memories." He muttered, finding it hard to believe that a mere human could enter a Timelord's mind, but nonetheless drawing the right conclusions from the strange look of recognition and confusion in her eyes. "While I was digging in your memories, you used the link to sneak a peak into mine."

"It was not just a mere peak." Anne admitted, her eyes shining with a new, dangerous knowledge. A smile of utter disbelief crossed her face. "I was there with you, in a settlement among the stars, a strange Utopian place of a thousand worlds. We were husband and wife." Her mouth dropped open with this realization. "I loved you." She muttered, half in disbelief. "And you…you loved me."

The awkward silence that followed was broken by several knocks on the door.

"Milady?" Antoine enquired. "Are you all right? I was just passing by and heard the commotion in your private chamber."

The Master breathed in deeply and gazed at Anne, who looked back at him strictly. "Aren't you going to threaten me to keep my silence?" Anne whispered, not without reproach.

"Milady?" Antoine called. His knocks on the chamber door grew more impatient.

"Yes Antoine." Anne said, keeping her gaze on the Master. "I am fine. It was my cat. He jumped on the vanity and swept some of my perfume bottles on the floor." Anne answered in a clear voice.

"Do you help? Do you need me to come in to fetch the animal?"

"No." Anne told him after a short pause. "I'll be fine."

"Well, if you need me for anything else my good lady, I will be at the chapel." Antoine said, and even thought his mistress was behind closed doors, he took off his hat and bowed to her before he left.

Anne sighed deeply. "If he had seen you in my chambers, he would have put a bullet straight through your brain before he even thought of asking questions. He's very protective."

"The question is why didn't you let him?" The Master asked, incapable of understanding her act of kindness.

Anne gazed back at him. If she had once felt real fear towards him, it had now all vanished from her heart. "How can I betray you, after all what you've shown me." She told him with sincerity in her voice.

The Master was surprised when she took his gaunt face in her soft hands, and slowly turned it from side to side while she studied him.

"So this is how a Lord of time looks like." She said inquisitively.

"Well not everyone is as good-looking as I am." The Master replied with a flirtatious grin.

"This is what you are." Anne said. "The 15th regeneration of the Master, a remorseless man who does not love anything in this universe because he claims he has forgotten how."

The smile disappeared from the Master's face. "How much have you've been probing inside my memories?"

"I've seen enough, heard enough and_ felt_ enough to know you." Anne's eyes shone with the deepest of sympathy. "You are lonely, and scared, and haunted by your own nightmares to the brink of sanity, but you don't want anyone to know. Not even the Doctor."

"Stop it!" The Master told her angrily, shaking his head and putting a finger on her lips. "Don't say anything more."

"It's the truth. Why still try to hide it if I know everything about you?" Her voice filled with sadness. "My poor fugitive from the stars, constantly fleeing from the past in search of a place of silence where he can no longer hear the drums."

The Master grabbed her hand. "What more do you know about the drums?" He asked, fearing that she got more out of their short liaison than he got out of her.

"I know as much as you." She told him with a sad smile. "And they are indeed poisonous…Ever since I survived my own execution I wish that I had never taken my Lord's gift. His voice…it's calling inside me every night. An endless onslaught on my sanity."

Her eyes shone with the beginning of tears, and gently, she caressed his face. "So I know _Koshei_." She told him.

"I know how it feels, and I understand why you need to be free of it."

His stone heart melted when he heard her speak his name. There were only two people in the entire universe that he trusted enough with his true name. It brought out every feeling he once had for her in that strange would-have-been world, and he was unable to let her go.

"Anne, listen to me." He begged, taking her hands into his own. "Let me help you. I know how to get rid of the drums."

"You told me you loved me more than your own life." She whispered, gazing at him with hooded eyes. "Just before we parted, right before the Doctor took me away to flee from the Daleks. You said…"

"If we survive this. I promise." The Master whispered. "I'll find you."

"Milady!" A coarse voice suddenly called that stirred both the Master and Anne. "You're summoned at the chapel by the Watcher."

"Let her know I shall come soon." Anne replied firmly, keeping her eyes on the Master.

"She said, at once!" The hooded monk waiting at her door replied.

"Go." She whispered to the Master. "Hide behind the mirror and wait till I am gone. Quickly, before he gets impatient and unlocks my chamber. He has a key."

"I'll come back for you." The Master told her.

"I know." Anne replied, smiling shyly at him. "You made a promise."

"And that I will keep." He answered with all the sincerity in his hearts.

"Milady?" Came the impatient reply.

"I am coming!" Anne rose up and crossed her bedroom. Before she opened the door, she glanced back to make sure that the Master was out of sight. Then she unlocked her chamber and stepped outside, immediately shutting the door behind her.

**6.**

"What are we suppose to do in here?" Donna wondered. "It would hardly be like attending church at Sundays." She took in the congregation that had gathered in the small private chapel. There were at least 100 monks, just standing around and waiting. Each of them was so hideously scarred that it was impossible to for her to determine their age or even their gender. The large cathedral-like windows with the colorful leaded light patterns were half obscured behind a huge tarpaulin that hung behind the altar. It was spattered with dark crimson stains whose origins were too grisly for Donna to think about.

Raised high above her followers and standing in front of her sedan chair on a platform, the Watcher, a half-mummified woman who could possibly be as old as Methuselah himself, gazed down upon them with an indistinguishable look in her ancient eyes.

If we start singing Amazing Grace right now, I would probably not be able to keep myself from giggling like an idiot, Donna thought.

"Silence!" The old woman screamed, unexpectedly producing an awful lot of sound out of her dusty lungs. She looked down at her flock with a sudden alertness in her eyes. "We have gathered to receive the word of our Lord, our almightily shepherd." She raised her withered sticklike arms to the ceiling. "Listen. He is calling. His voice growing stronger and stronger."

Donna and Wilf gazed around and noticed that the all of the brethren were extending their hands upwards to receive whatever that was supposed to be send down to them, and to keep in character, they attempted to do the same. It was quite hard though to completely mimic that almost intoxicated expression of brain-dead spiritual elevation if you didn't exactly know who you were worshipping.

"Stronger, and stronger still." Murmured the Watcher, closing her eyes. "Prepare the contraption." She ordered.

Donna glanced up to the ceiling where a huge structure that looked like telescope aimed straight upright to the sky dangled from a web of thick robes. It was slowly lowered down by eight strong looking monks using a primitive pulley system. The eyepiece was centered right above the altar where the Watcher stood.

"Open the window to the stars." The Watcher ordered next, and a hole opened up in the ceiling, that grew larger as panels in the roof shifted to make an open space. The brethren below shielded their eyes when the harsh afternoon-sun shone through and cast the gloom out of the chapel.

"We're almost ready to receive our Lord." The Watcher moaned, and blinked her sensitive eyes against the blinding light. She too was not used to be exposed to the sun, having not stepped outside her temple for more than over two decades. When she was finally struggling to keep on her feet, two of her men came to her aid and slowly lowered her down into her sedan chair.

"Soon." She croaked. "Soon I will be strong again. Once my wretched body has received our Lord's spirit, He will restore my youth. He will cast this wickedly burned skin from my flesh and replace it with a new, far better coat, and I shall be his beautiful bride." She gestured to one of the monks. "Where is that Tudor queen?" She asked, narrowing her eyes and casting an impatient glance over her worshipping minions.

"I am here." The rows of monks parted, and Anne came forward. She curtsied politely. "Your most honorable abbess, you summoned me?"

The Watched held out one mummified hand. "The jewel." She whispered. "The white diamond that had adorned the necklace of Marie Antoinette and that I've commanded you to collect. Do you have it?"

Anne hesitated for a moment, but finally took her silver locker and opened it. A perfectly cut, round diamond the size of a pearl dropped in her hand.

The eyes of the Watcher widened in anticipation. "Hand it to me!"

Anne offered the jewel to the old woman, who took it greedily, and held it between her thumb and finger up to the light. "Behold this blinding jewel!" She gasped. Anne's efforts and sacrifice were completely forgotten, she only had eye for her treasure.

"The brightest most noble star." The Watcher spoke. "That's what was lacking! That was what we still needed to finish our Lord's greatest work!" With the aid of her servants, she shuffled to the monster telescope, and with her claw-like hands trembling uncontrollably of excitement, she was about to fit the diamond in the specially carved niche that would place it directly in the path of the lenses, when a hand reached out from above and snatched from her.

The old Watcher gazed at her empty hand and screamed, as the robber swept over her head, dangling from one of the ropes used to hold the telescope contraption in position. Donna and Wilf held their breath when he cast his red robe aside and revealed himself to the audience below.

"What is he doing up there?" Donna hissed.

"Told you he would show up." Wilf muttered, gazing with a wide eyed look up at the ceiling.

Her granddaughter shook her head as she watched how the Master rushed down the rope and landed next to the raging Watcher. "Is he mad or what?"

The Master had just his feet back on the ground and had let go of the rope, when the old woman fixed her eyes on him in astonishment.

"Rope burn!" He said with a mad grin, blowing on his hands to cool them down. "I hate it when this happens!" Before the Watcher could say anything, he had grabbed hold of her and had tossed the cord around her frail birdlike neck a couple of times before tightening it with a firm grip.

"Stand back!" He yelled down at the monks who were already scrambling over each-other to get on the platform to rescue their mistress. "All of you! Come any closer and I'll turn this walking corpse into a real one." He shouted, smiling about on own morbid joke.

Even now, the Watcher was furious that the precious diamond was taken from her. Her hands clawed wildly at the Master, trying to pry the jewel from his fingers, but she lacked severely in strength to succeed.

"What are going on about, you crazy bat?" The Master smirked, clearly enjoying the violence. He brought with his free hand the jewel closer for inspection. "Let's see what you're little treasure is." He muttered and glanced fleetingly at the shimmering object.

The white diamond was not just an ordinary diamond.

The diamond was a perfectly cut, unspoiled white point star.

**_TBC_**


	5. Chapter 5

**Once again, a big thanks to everyone who has reviewed the previous chapters!**

**Chapter 5**

1.

The very sight of the white point star wiped the smile from the Master's face and plunged him in a state of fear and irrationality. Meanwhile, the Watcher was struggling to breathe, clawing her hands at the Timelord's ever tightening grip while her bulging eyes stared at him, but the Master had just lost his last trace of compassion that he might have had for the old woman.

"Where did you get this?" He sneered. "This is a star of Gallifrey. Why has it fallen into the hands of a mad old witch? What will you do with it? Speak!"

He loosened his grip to let her talk, but instead of using her hard gained breath to answer any of his questions, she turned to her subordinates and started to scream.

"Help me you bunch of incompetent weaklings!" She gasped. "Get back the white point star and _kill him_!"

The monks swarmed up the stage in compliance, and launched themselves recklessly on the Master who tightened the ropes around their mistress neck in defense. From underneath their robes, they produced knives, swords and metal maces, making the Master wonder where they had kept these things hidden all the time, and why the hell he couldn't find any weapons on the monk he had to dispatch earlier.

"Idiots!" Hissed the Watcher. "What are you waiting for? Free me!" She could only half-finish her sentence, for the Master choked the last breath of air out of her.

"No." Donna mumbled, following the threatening situation with growing anxiety. "Don't do it."

"Come on my love." Anne whispered under her breath. "Kill that old witch and set me free."

The Master stared down into the crowd and found Anne, looking at him with great anticipation. It was all the encouragement he needed. Just when he was about to pull the ropes, a shot was fired from the other side of chapel. The Master felt a hot sting explode in his shoulder. The impact swirled him around and forced him to let go of the Watcher. As he propelled backwards, the star slipped from his fingers. It rolled over the floor till it disappeared in a crack between the floorboards.

Antoine strode towards the platform with a determined look on his face while he prepared his aim for a second shot. Coming up so close to his target while the Master was still dazed and struggling to get up, it was going to be hard for the gunman to miss the Timelord's head.

"No!" Anne shouted, and was about to rush forward to stop Antoine, when two of the monks suddenly ran forwards and threw themselves on the gunman's back, making him collapse under their weight. The shot was still fired at the platform, and wooden splinters exploded in a cloud of smoke while the rest of the monks scrambled over each-other to get out of range, causing complete chaos.

"Get off me, you buffoons!" Antoine yelled, and cursed loudly when his gun was kicked out of his hand by a fleeing monk and slid away underneath the podium, far away from his reach.

While still half-hanging from Antoine's neck, Donna stuck her head above the podium, and searched for the Master. She found him crawling unsteadily on his hands and knees, trying to regain his focus after being flung against the wall.

"Right, about time to get the heck out of here, don't you think?" She told him, pointing in the direction of the doors. She leaped off the gunman's back and kicked Antoine in the stomach before she helped Wilf up and vanished into the crowd before he could get a good look at them both.

The Master didn't need to be told twice.

He jumped back on his feet and leaped off the platform while the Watcher was still coughing her lungs out.

"Go after him!" She screeched, baring her graveyard row of teeth. "Catch him alive! I'll flay him! I'll rip the skin from his aching flesh! I'll tear him apart from limp to limp, that miserable little rat!" She carefully removed the ropes from her neck, and winced when strips of her skin came off with it. "The star." She breathed, struggling hard to refill her old lungs with air. "Where is my star!"

2.

Somehow the Master managed to flee out of the chapel, but his wound kept oozing blood, leaving a trail behind for his enemies to follow. He dived into the different rooms, trying to shake off the monks by throwing whatever came in his way in their path, but although they looked old and frail, those ugly buggers were still amazingly fast on foot, and dodge all of the obstacles with ease. He finally reached what he thought of as the kitchen. Eager to arm himself, he pulled an entire rack of knives from the wall and started throwing them at his enemies. The first one hit the closest monk in the shoulder and swept him down to the floor.

"One." The Master said to himself, and flung another one. The blade rotated in the air and cut the nose right off the second monk.

"Two." He added, and wondered why the hell he was counting these acts of bloody violence as if he was keeping track with his winning shots at a funfair game. _I really need to find the Doctor fast, _he thought with growing concern. _First the puppets, and now this. Maybe I am truly losing my final grips on my sanity._

He glanced over his shoulder, and saw two trailing monks who were raising their short knives, ready to throw them at him.

The Master spun around and launched two cleavers at the same time. Each of them went for the brethrens hands and with one turn around the axis of the blades, cut them clean off by the wrists.

"Three and four." The Master added with a malicious smirk, and watched not without glee how the deformed men screamed and held on to their raw stumps, while a fountain of crimson sprayed in their faces. Half-slipping over their own blood, they ran away from the vengeful Timelord as fast as their feet could carry them.

But of course, there were still plenty of the Watcher's minions left who didn't get the bloody message.

The Master slowly backed away, keeping his eyes on the group of the remaining monks. He knew that they would only be briefly intimidated by the grisly fate of their brethren, and that they soon would realize that he was running out of ways to defend himself. The situation indeed looked grim. There were still at least 16 of them, each yielding a real weapon, while all he had left for himself was a short potato knife. Cursing under his breath, his mind turned quickly to think of a way out, while his enemies tightened the circle.

He bumped his back against the base cabins and heard the rattling of metal inside. With a shimmer of hope, he turned around and pulled a drawer open to reveal a whole set of fresh steak knives. It would supply him with plenty ammunition. Quickly, he grabbed a handful.

"Oh look what you've made me do. I just lost count." The Master said in a low, dark voice, staring each of the men straight in the eyes. He fanned out the blades, and showed them a perfect semicircle of razor sharp talons.

"Better start over again." The Master added with a cold murderous grin.

And he so did.

3.

"Where's is he?" Donna asked. She rushed through the rooms with Wilf by her side in a search-party of monks. "He can't be far. Not with that bullet wound."

She stopped dead in her track when she noticed a trail of crimson dots on the otherwise spotless blue carpet, and hurriedly pulled back her granddad.

"What? What's going on?" Wilf muttered.

Donna lifted her feet and showed Wilf the bloodstains.

"It goes that way." She whispered. They headed to the back of the group and let the monks run pass till the very last of them disappeared into the next room. Left on their own, Donna and Wilf followed the trail into the study, through the library, and out into the next corridor into a large kitchen complex, where Donna suddenly stopped again.

"Oh gramps, please tell me that's just a bit of sausage in tomato sauce." She said in a thin voice while she stared down at the bloody lump lying on the tiles.

"No. No that's a real human nose." Wilf replied, equally shocked by the gruesome finding.

Donna shut her eyes and stepped over it, only to be unpleasantly surprised a few meters further down where she almost slipped over a severed hand lying in a wet smear of blood.

"What is this? The haunted mansion? Where do all these body parts come from?"

Donna tried hard not to throw up. Warily, they ventured further into the kitchen, following their trail of bloody breadcrumbs, till they reached the very back.

Even after all the gruesome sights, Donna was still not prepared for what she found there.

It was like a wild animal had been set lose on the monks. Donna gazed in silent shock as she stepped over the heavily mutilated bodies. Everywhere she looked, there was blood. Blood smeared over the cabins. Blood dripping from the table and forming pools on the kitchen floor. Blood on the dead men's faces, streaming from their numerous wounds and blooming in large dark stains on their robes like macabre flowers.

Blood on the Master's hands and trickling down his face.

He sat on the kitchen table between the bowls of fruit and baskets of bread, kicking his feet over the side while he was busy prying a long filet-knife out of a dead monk's eye socket. Donna had to clinch when she heard the crunch that the blade made as it dislodged from the bone.

"Master." She whispered, her eyes widening in disbelief. "What have you done?"

The Master glared up at her and just grinned, his wild eyes, filled with insanity. And for a moment, Donna could actually believe that the Master could as easily kill her like he had butchered the monks, just to know the color of her insides. She jumped back frightened when the Master flung his legs over the edge of the table, and stabbed the last remaining knife into the wooden surface while he landed his feet on the floor.

"And where have you two been?" He asked, wiping his hands clean over his shirt as if he had just filleted a chicken. "I've been waiting here for ages. Do you have any idea how bored I am?"

"We…We couldn't find you." Donna stuttered, glancing back at Wilf for help.

Wilf came a little closer to him. "Master?" He asked, studying his face. "Are you all right son?"

"Splendid! Marvelous! Most excellently spectacular! Never been better." The Master snapped. He clapped in his hands and laughed, glancing around at the disemboweled bodies like a mad butcher enjoying his achievements.

"Have you completely lost your mind?" Donna told him, genuinely disturbed by the way the Master reacted. "How can you just laugh? All these people, you've just butchered them and you act like it's nothing!" She stared at the Master with a look of complete incomprehension in her eyes, while he just kept giggling insanely, showing not even a glimpse of normal human emotion or whatsoever.

Wilf pinched her hand and shook his head. "Don't provoke him." He whispered, having experienced the Master's insanity before, he recognized that darkness in his eyes all too well.

"I can't…" Donna turned around, and pressed her hand against her mouth to stop herself from screaming.

"Oh now wait minute. Don't tell me." The Master grinned. "You're all upset again about what I did." He gazed at Donna with a look of boldness on his face. "So I got rid of these men who tried to murder me, big deal! How does that topple your moral scale?" Suddenly angered, he plucked the filet-knife from the tabletop and flung it against the wall.

"These men are the enemy, not me!" He pointed out while he shouted into Wilf's pale face. "Why don't you both finally get it in your thick monkey skulls! Grow a brain instead of looking at me with those condemning little eyes! All judgmental, and compassionate, and patronizing and so fucking righteous!" He stormed over to Donna and pulled her over to a corpse lying on the table.

"Oh no! Don't do that! Let her go!" Wilf yelled, but the Master would not listen to him. At this moment, he wouldn't listen to anyone except for the mad screaming voices inside his head.

"Look at him!" He yelled, and almost pushed Donna's face into the gaping wound that he had inflicted in the monk's chest. "This is what they deserve! Anyone who opposes me, anyone who stands in my way, this is how they all should end up!"

"Master!" Wilf's voice was trembling as he begged silently to him to release his granddaughter. The Master held the old man's gaze for a while. Then the dark storm inside his mind finally passed over into that strange tranquil place and both anger and reason abandoned him.

"You're all like the Doctor." He muttered, and let go of Donna. As soon as she felt his grip loosen, she struggled free and rushed back into her granddad's arms.

"All of you." The Master muttered. "Every one who has ever traveled with him. You act like you're him. Copying his ways, willing to fight the virtuous fight. He has changed you forever. Made you all want to be like him." The Master leaned back on the table and gazed down miserably. "Why can't you just understand. We can never be him." He said softly. "I can never be him." He studied his blood-soaked hands as if he had just noticed them.

"I've seen enough." Donna muttered, and pulled her granddad away from the Master. "We're going." She turned around resolutely, her mind made up to leave all of this insanity behind.

"Wait. Donna, we can't just leave him here like this." Wilf tried.

"I don't care if he's a Timelord or a friend of the Doctor, but that was the deed of a MONSTER!" Donna pointed out. "We are gong to find the Doctor and we're getting out of here."

"Blood." The Master whispered, a hint of despair in his voice. "There is so much blood. I can't…I can't get my hands clean." Slowly, he began to wipe them over the table top in long sweeping motions, smearing his victim's blood into the wood nerves. He gazed helplessly at Wilf. "It's on my shirt and in my hair and on my face. It's everywhere."

"Donna, he's not well." Wilf told her. "We can't leave him. Not after what he has done for us."

Donna took in a deep breath and glanced back at the wretched Timelord, who had stumbled to the sink and was trying to scrape his hands clean under the running tap with his fingernails. A flashback came to her, and she recalled how confused and scared the Master had been when they were fleeing from the Judoon soldiers. His current condition reminded her of the fragile young man that had needed her protection.

"Alright." She sighed. "We going to drag his bloody ass away from here. But no more killing or I swear we'll just leave him to those mad monks."

"I don't think the monks are going to survive that." Wilf added wisely, and helped Donna to stop the Master from scrubbing his skin off his hands.

"What are you doing? I need to wash." The Master objected weakly when she turned off the tap.

"They're clean." Donna told him. As if she was explaining things to a six year old, she took his hands and turned them around to show it to him. "See? You can stop now."

They dragged him away from the sink. "Come on you crazy spaceman." Donna said as they guided him out of the kitchen. "We need to find you a hiding place."

"Hide? What are you talking about? Don't be so stupid. I don't need to hide." The Master said, digging his heels in the floor. "I deliberately want them to find me, that's the whole plan."

Donna gazed at her granddad mouthing a silent but urgent _What the fuck? _at him, but Wilf waved her worries away. "Don't listen to him. He's just rambling." He whispered, hoping that the Master wouldn't hear.

"I am not rambling!" The Master yelled back, taking true offence that they were treating him like a bloody imbecile, and swept his arms back to get his hands free. "The Doctor rambles like a an idiot, but not me. Look, we had a plan, remember? And we're going to stick to it."

"Actually, we don't remember because you've never bothered to tell us." Donna answered, getting so irritated that she forgot to be nice to him again.

The Master looked quite perplexed. "I didn't?" He asked Wilf, who shrugged and shook his head at him. "Well better late than never." The Master grinned, and wet his lips. "Listen." He whispered, and leaned forward as if he was sharing some important tactics with them. "The plan is this, you two sound alarm, and I am going to get caught."

"You what?" Wilf muttered.

"Right, now it's definitely time for the white nurses and the funny-farm car to come around." Donna muttered under her breath. "Gramps, are you still sure that we want to drag him along? He has gone completely bonkers."

Luckily, the Master seemed not to have heard her. "It's going to work." He said with complete confidence. He patted down his pockets and retrieved both the Doctor's sonic and his own laserscrewdriver. "Here." He said and tossed them over at Wilf and Donna, who each caught one of the devices.

"You want us to laser-fight our way out for you." Donna said. "What do you think we are? Jedi warriors? I can't even do a split without tearing up a muscle."

"Don't be ridiculous. They're perfectly locked. You won't be able to fire one single shot. Frankly I won't trust any of you near a functional weapon even if it was specially designed for the left-handed and proved to be as blunt and dull as one of the Doctor's dreadful monologues." He added, gaining a nasty look from Donna. "By the way, you're holding it upside down." He commented with a grin, just to put the finishing touches to her utterly annoyed look.

"If they're locked and we can't use them, then what are we supposed to do with them?" Wilf asked, glancing down at the Doctor's sonic.

"Put them away. I only give them to you for safekeeping. So hide them well." The Master glanced over Wilf's shoulder into the kitchen. Footsteps could be heard, mixed with loud voices that border-lined on panic. "They're coming." He muttered. "Quick, grab a knife and aim it at me." He stuck his hands in the air in the pretence that he was surrendering himself. "Do it!" He urged. Donna and Wilf grabbed whatever was closest available and pointed it at the Master.

"Are you sure about this?" Wilf asked worriedly.

The Master took in a deep breath and nodded. "Just keep your eyes and ears open. And don't let me be removed from your sight."

"Brothers Mathieu and Alphonse!" Antoine exclaimed, as he approached with his gang of monks. "You've caught our villain." He said, staring down at the bodies sprawled over the floor with a look of alarm on his face.

He gazed up at the two monks with great perplexity. "What happened here?"

"Oh, it was a genuine bloodbath sir!" Wilf answered. "Our brethren fought like lions to get this monster down, but in the end, a lot of them paid for that extraordinary courage with their lives."

"Yes. I can see that." Antoine stepped over the bodies to get to the prisoner. "He certainly has a murderous and deranged look in his eyes." He muttered after studying the Master up close. He turned around, taking in the two monks. "How come you two are the only ones left alive?"

"Well, someone always has to be lucky." Wilf responded, short of a better explanation.

The Master couldn't keep himself from rolling his eyes for such a sorry excuse, but Antoine though it through for a moment. "I suppose your right." He finally shrugged. "Anyway, lady Fortuna is often with the dumb." He gestured to his gang to grab hold of the prisoner. "Don't just stand there. Search him for weapons!" He told them.

"No Need to sir. We've already done that." Donna answered. She hastily stepped forward and grabbed hold of the Master's wrist, while Wilf did the same on the other side. The Master winced when she twisted his injured arm on his back and held it there.

"Thank you brother Alphonse." Antoine said with a glint of suspicion in his scarred eye. "That was surprisingly efficiency." He held out his hand to which Donna responded with a blank stare.

"What did he have on him?" Antoine asked, trying to keep his patience.

"Oh…He didn't carry any." Donna replied.

Antoine gave her a most unconvinced look. "He did all this with his bare hands?" He asked, gesturing at the bloodbath.

Donna swallowed hard. "He used the knives in the kitchen. Anything that was sharp enough actually." She made up quickly, unaware that what she was telling Antoine was not far from the truth.

A sly smile crept over the gunman's lips. "And you two apprehended him, using a fish knife and a spatula?"

Donna began to sweat when Antoine held her eyes for a moment.

"Let's get him to down to the vaults." He finally ordered, turning around and beckoning to Donna and Wilf to follow him with the prisoner.

"And let someone _please_ clean up this bloody mess!" He told the others.

4.

Anne had slipped out of the chaos of the chapel unnoticed and hurried back to her chambers. As soon as she had slammed the door shut behind her she turned the lock, and went looking.

"Master!" She whispered urgently. She had hoped that the injured Timelord had run back to her quarters for refuge. "Master are you here?" She searched through her room but found no sign of him. Worried about his safety, she was about to head out when her eyes caught a fleeting shadow crossing the large mirror in front of her wardrobe. Her heart skipped a beat.

"Koshei." She called weakly. "Is that you?" A dark shadow stretched over the surface of the mirror, and the room became dark and cold, like midnight in the depths of the forest. A robed figure emerged, his frame frightful to the human instinct because it was so unnaturally long and thin. A branchlike arm separated from the surface while the traces of the mirror clung onto it like a thick transparent membrane. The hooded entity waded through this bulging window with his skeletal hand extended towards her.

"Why do you keep haunting me?" Anne shouted at him, her fear robbing her from her will over her own body, leaving her unable to flee. "I did nothing wrong in life! It wasn't my choice! I never had any choice!"

DEATH looked down on her with neither pity nor malice in his two brilliant blue orbs that burnt inside his skull, and from between the folds of his dark robe, he produced his trusted scythe.

"Oh no!" Anne backed away from him, and almost stumbled over her own feet. "No! Please! Don't take me! I don't want to go!"

You have already been granted more than you were destined to receive. Death replied, and slowly raised his scythe.

"But that's not fair! I had been given hardly any time. I was not even allowed to see my little girl grow up." She cried. "I had to abandon her before her fourth birthday."

Such is your fate. written down in THE pages of history. fixed in time.

"But what if I can bargain with you?" Anne begged, her instinct for self-preservation kicking in. "What if I could offer you something in exchange for my own life?"

there is nothing you could offer me.

"Oh but there is! That man you showed me when you took me to glimpse into time on that world of snow and ice. The Timelord who called himself the Master. I can lead you to him. He's the one who has caused all this. He's the reason why all of this is happening. Why are you so determined to take my life, if you can stop that horrible future from unfolding just by removing its creator here and now? Is that not why you're here? Isn't that your purpose?"

DEATH lowered his blade and regarded her silently. The wretched Tudor queen didn't realize it yet, but DEATH does not bargain with anyone, but nor can he lie.

"What do you say? One life for one other?" Anne asked, anxiously clinging onto this one last chance. "Do you take my offer?"

BRING HIM TO ME. DEATH answered, and slowly faded back into the mirror.

5.

The ancient walls of the underground shaft were briefly illuminated when the concession passed on their long descend into the underground world. The Master peered down into the darkness as he descended the slippery stone steps. He was guarded by the monk-shimmers of Wilf and Donna on both sides, and was led by Antoine and a dwarf-sized monk holding a burning torch up front as they ventured down into the vast Roman vaults. The Master kept listening to his own footsteps to calculate the size of the crypts, and in his mind, he was already drawing up an escape route.

If only he could find the Doctor soon, the Master thought, than he could get the hell out of this overwhelming stink of human waste that seemed to grow thicker and more pungent as they came closer to their destination. Antoine led him to a corner of the vault where a metal slate sat in the floor. There he took over the torch from the dwarf-monk.

"Open it." Antoine ordered.

The dwarf-monk did what was asked of him, and with strained muscles and an arched back, managed to remove the lid, revealing a dark hole underneath. The stale stench that came drifting up was absolutely nauseating.

Antoine smirked maliciously at his prisoner. He took out his musket and waved it in the Master's face.

"What?" The Master replied, once again fully in control. "You came all the way down here to show me the human cesspit you came from?" He joked, and his lips curled into a most nasty smile that defied Antoine's own.

The Frenchman came forward and stared at the prisoner. His eyes narrowed. "It's funny, yes?" He hissed, replacing his gun with a short hand knife. "You're such a comic. Maybe I should give you something to really laugh about."

Donna's breath stalled when she watched Antoine jab his knife into the Master's stomach, but withheld the pointy dagger from piercing skin at the very last moment.

"I shall enjoy killing you, slowly." Antoine rasped. "I've kept a prisoner alive for 81 days once. Each day, I came down here to cut something off of him, but the sad bastard kept clinging to life. You should give me a chance to break my own record."

The Master looked back at him without even a trace of fear in his cold dark eyes. "So, you have it then." He told him. "You have the star?"

Antoine acted really surprised. "What do you mean?"

"Well you're not exactly interrogating me about it. Considering what it's worth to your mistress, you might expect that you would do anything to get it back. I should be sprawled out on a rack, being tortured to death by now while you extract the necessary information out of me with a lot of physical motivation, but instead you brought me here and are chatting me up about your perverted sadomasochistic hobbies. That's not the reaction you would expect from a loyal dog who's desperate to retrieve the ball to please his mistress." The Master cleverly concluded. "Unless, the dog isn't that loyal after all." He added knowingly, and produced a most confident smile that further infuriated Antoine.

"You are just speculating." The Frenchman replied, making sure that his entourage could hear. "Don't listen to him. Of course I don't have it."

"It dropped beneath the platform. Didn't you just happen to be crawling there like the pathetic little worm that you are, looking for your gun?" The Master replied accusingly.

"That's preposterous! I would never be disloyal to the Watcher!"

"Of course not, and you know what, you've got me completely convinced with that look of pure honesty in your eyes." The Master mocked, and the smile faded from his face. "Listen to me, you two-faced dog, I know greed when I see it. I've played my own parts in the infamous game of double-crossing and deceit and I can smell a traitor from a mile away. You are ripe with the stench of a true Judas."

Antoine's thin mask of confidence just melted away. "Who are you? And how come you know about the star?"

"Finally! Now you're asking the right questions!" The Master grinned, crossing his arms over his chest, he leaned towards his captor, his face darkening while his eyes shimmered with an ancient wisdom.

"I am one of the last of an ancient race so evolved and superior that the life's light of each and every one them is worth more than a thousand lives of your own miserable stunted species. My bloodline runs back deep into the rivers of time, all way to the beginning of the universe itself. And I know about the star, because that star and I came from the same impossible place where the twin suns of Justice and Perseverance once burnt in a crimson sky. A magnificent world that yields to the complete and utter will of my people who could decide over the color of the grass, the songs of the birds, or even the heights of the mountains. It came from my lost home, the red planet of Gallifrey." The Master paused and pointed at Antoine. "That diamond you're trying to hide is one of Gallifrey's most precious white point star."

Antoine's face had drained of color, but his eyes suddenly lit up when he heard the Master speak out the name. "W-what did you say?"

"The star of Gallifrey." The Master hissed. "You have it. What do you want to do with it?"

Donna felt a chill run down her spine when a cold, calculative smile split Antoine's lips. The way the man reacted, it didn't seem right.

"Oh, you have no idea how long I've been waiting to hear someone speak those words to me." Antoine grinned, and before Donna or Wilf could do anything to stop him, he stabbed his dagger in the Master in the side. The Master slumped forward while his attacker grabbed him by his shoulder. "Welcome Timelord." Antoine whispered into his ear. "Glad you're here to join us." He turned the blade and pulled back, and warm blood came rushing out of the flesh wound in a cascade of crimson.

"Oh no!" Donna gasped, pressing her hand onto her mouth when Antoine let go of the Master and shoved him off in the direction of the pit. Weakened and his balance lost, the Master slipped over the side and tumbled through the deep dark abyss into the wet waste below.

Wilf pinched her hand and shook his head, meaning that she should keep quiet, but Donna could hardly control herself from shaking.

Antoine peered over the edge and smiled broadly. "Doctor! It's not exactly dinner that I'm dropping on you, but I hope you will not mind the company of a fellow Timelord." He called down into the dark. "Keep an eye on him for me will you? Don't let him bleed to death, although I'm almost sure he cannot."

"Did…Did he just say Doctor?" Donna whispered. Wilf nodded and watched with worried eyes how the dwarf-monk pushed the heavy metal slate back in position, locking both Timelords away from the outside world. "He did." Wilf muttered. "I can't believe it. That crazy son of a bitch! His plan actually worked. He really brought us to the Doctor."

"Yes, but how do they get out again?" Donna panicked.

"The Master wanted to keep us by his side, because he needed us to know where that mad Frenchman kept the Doctor." Wilf answered. "We'll have to come back later, and then help them out of the pit."

Donna nodded, a headstrong determination burnt inside her guts. Whatever risk they needed to take, they will rescue the two Timelords. She just hoped that the Master was all right.

"Don't worry. He can't die." Wilf told her, noticing the look in her eyes. "Well, sort of can't. At least he told me so."

"Why are you two still here?" Antoine told them both. "Don't tell me you expect a reward for catching him?"

"Oh no milord." Wilf answered quickly. "After what he did to our brethren, we only regard it as our sacred duty to apprehend him."

"Indeed, and don't expect anything else." Antoine replied coldly. "Now don't just stand there. The time of our Lord's return is almost upon us. Return to the chapel and help the others in the preparation."

"Yes milord." Donna and Wilf replied, and followed the dwarf-monk back to the staircase. Just when she walked by Antoine, Donna caught a glimpse of something small and shimmering, kept hidden in the palm of his hand.

6.

The Doctor was just staring up at the bright yellow disk in the ceiling when he caught sight of a dark figure falling over the edge. It dissolved in the darkness for a second before it hit the foul wastewater below. Then he heard Antoine's voice, yelling down at him loud and clear.

"Don't let him bleed to death. Although I am almost sure he cannot."

The Doctor dived through the muddy water, heading straight for the direction where he had heard the splash. Above his head, the circle of light was quickly disappearing again.

"Master!" He screamed. "Say something! Let me know where you are!" His hearts were racing. Even through the thick stench of decay and waste, he could smell the faint coppery scent of his companion's blood.

"Master!"

"Oh shut up." Came the soft but annoyed reply, followed by a miserable groan.

"Master!" The Doctor waded through the disorientating darkness till he bumped right into him. "Are you all right? Not hurt?" He asked with concern in his voice.

"I've just been stabbed in the side a minute ago, what do you think?" The Master replied, but the Doctor could hear clearly that the Master's pride was more harmed than himself, which was a relief. He helped his fellow Timelord to the brim of the cesspit pool, and pushed him up the elevation to get him on dry land.

"Here, let me help you." The Doctor ripped off a sleeve from his wet shirt and tried to wrap it around the Master's waist to stop the bleeding, but the Master refused to let him touch the wound. "Oh no." He rasped, still clenching his teeth from the pain. "You re not going to bandage me with that piece of cloth drenched in human shit."

"Don't be so difficult. An open wound can get infected."

"Oh and you think it won't if you press the germs right into it?" The Master ridiculed. "What kind of a Doctor are you?"

He eventually allowed the Doctor tend his wounds. Then the two of them sat in the darkness for a while, just listening to the quiet but steady drips of water coming from the ceiling.

"So…this is how it is to travel with the Doctor." The Master mused while looking up. He was feeling better already, and needed a good sneer at his fellow companion to take his mind from the pain. "Your human pets do keep telling me that you take them to the most _wonderful_ places."

"Oh yes. I do tend to take the people I like to the nice places. The not so nice ones are more for the difficult relationships, just to keep it interesting." The Doctor joked back. He stared in the direction of where the Master sat. "You've come to get me. How did you know where I was?"

"It wasn't that hard. I went after your captor's horse carriage till it disappeared through the time gap. I just followed the trail left by the time-dust using the Tardis. Of course with my wit I should have found you earlier, but I was a delayed. I was forced to rescue that most annoying redhead companion of yours from getting her thick neck cut off by the French mob."

"Hang on, you've found Donna?" The Doctor said, pleasantly surprised.

The Master sighed. "I wish I didn't. Does that woman ever shut the hell up?"

"Who? Donna? Oh no, not Donna, she just keeps talking and not listening at all. On and on she goes. She is absolutely marvelous." The Doctor cheered, feeling a great sense of relief wash over him again after hearing the good news.

"She remembers you. Her memory is fully restored." The Master could not see the Doctor in the complete darkness, but he could actually imagine that look of foolish gratitude and stupendous happiness brightening his face.

"I can't wait to see her." The Doctor blurted.

"I simply cannot relate to that." The Master replied dryly. "Although I must admit that I would be immensely disappointed by the sheer limitedness of her mental capacity if she didn't show up in time to get us out."

"You…You what? You dragged her all the way here? Right in the stronghold of a crazy cult of star worshippers?"

"She's not alone. Wilf is with her."

"Wilf? Why did you bring Wilf here?" The Doctor replied, even more alarmed.

"Oh don't blame me. He wanted to come himself. Besides, they're both quite safe. I used a shimmer to make them look like those potato-faced monks. The disguise was perfect. No-one noticed, not even that stinking Frenchman." He paused for a moment. Oh how he would love to repay him for his cruelty. He would repay him by spilling his warm guts all over the expensive carpets of the main hall.

"So you want to rely on them to get us out?" The Doctor asked, still blissfully unaware of these very dark thoughts that now frequently occupied the Master's mind.

"Relying is not the right word here." The Master replied, and shook his head slowly to get rid of these blood-drenched fantasies of revenge. "_hoping_ might be a better description." He shrugged. "But then again, they're idiots. Who am I to assume that they won't muck it up."

"Don't talk about them like that. They are amazing, both of Donna and Wilf, and I for one have faith in them."

"Faith." The Master sniggered. "Oh you always had such blind trust in humankind Doctor." He said with a deep sigh of boredom. "And look where it has got you, imprisoned in a stinking cesspit six meters underground with human excrement up to your waist line."

"Didn't you ever have anyone who you could trust? One of your own companions?" The Doctor asked, genuinely curious.

The Master fell silent for a moment. Not that he was still pondering on the answer, but he felt quite hesitant to share this with the Doctor. "When I was wandering around looking for you, I met this girl." He finally murmured. "A human. She's imprisoned by the Watcher's Order and longs for escape. She…she looks like Anne. Actually, she is Anne."

"She can't be." The Doctor replied softly, really worried by the fact that the Master had spoken to her already. He didn't want the Master to know about Rassilon, not yet at least. "I know about her. I've met her too. She is not your wife Anne. In fact she's King Henri the 8th's wife Anne Boleyn. The Watcher must have kidnapped her from her timeframe and brought her here for her own purpose. Don't get confused by how familiar she looks. That world that was created on board of the Infinity was never real. So she can't be your wife."

"I shared my mind with her. She now knows and remembers everything that has once passed between us."

"You shared your mind…" The Doctor needed to take in a deep breath to stop him from succumbing to a complete state of panic. "That's absolutely reckless, even for you!" He pointed out sternly.

"Doctor." The Master continued undisturbed. "If the world around us is only real when it is perceived in here." And he pointed at the side of his skull. "How can you call something that is created in the same place not real? If an idea can be true, if your belief in humanity can be true, why not an entire world that is created in my mind?"

"Oh don't get philosophical with me. This is neither the place nor the time. Master, Anne is here for a reason. She is linked to the Watcher's Order and therefore serves the goals of the Infinity Corporation. Everything that we went through, all those changes and disturbances in time that we have encountered ever since we came in contact with the Infinity spaceship, are linked to her. You have to keep seeing things in perspective. I am not saying that she is dangerous, but –"

"I want to take her away from this place." The Master said, indifferent of the Doctor's arguments. "She could come with us as a human companion."

"You…what?" Blurted the Doctor. "No she can't! Haven't you even heard one word that I've said? She's Anne Boleyn the Tudor queen and like Rachel, she was abducted from her timeframe. What is happening here should never have happened to her, and you want to make it worse by taking her along on a holiday trip on the Tardis?"

"Well, you let me save Rachel, didn't you?" The Master continued relentlessly. "You let me change her fate, why not Anne's?"

"Because Anne Boleyn is a fixed point in time!" The Doctor yelled back, desperate to make this clear to him. In his head, River's warnings ran in an endless loop. He could not allow the Master to alter Anne's fate, for it was in the solitude of the pristine Duncan forests that River Song had revealed her knowledge of the future to him.

_The light of the stars started to fade. Dawn was soon to arrive. As they ventured through woodlands, and made their way between barren trunks and prickly undergrowth, they were greeted by the frail birdsongs of the very first morning birds._

_"Listen. Beautiful, isn't it?" River whispered. "It's like the ancient forests of Shadunshi." She glanced back at him, hopeful to see a sign of recognition on his face. But this was a much younger Doctor, one who had not known her for so long to remember the good times they had on the little dwarf planet._

_"What did the Ood elders exactly tell you?" The Doctor asked. He had been so caught up in his own troubled thoughts that he had not even heard River's remarks._

_"Not much. You know how they are. Oh come sit with the elders of the Ood. Come share the dreaming. Don't sit too close to the flames, your hair might catch fire, that sort of stuff. When it comes to the interpretations of what was shown, they could explain very little themselves."_

_"Well, they've always been a race of very few words." The Doctor answered, remembering his own dream session went quite vividly. "What did they show you? Can you recall any of it?"_

_"It was all a bit hazy really. " River shut her eyes for a moment, trying to dig deep inside her memories. "I saw the symbol of three, marked as a merging between the Greek letters alpha and omega in a triangle shape. It has started showing up everywhere. Not only here on earth in the 21st century, but also in space, throughout the entire history of the human race. It hasn't been there before."_

_"That's exactly the same symbol as on the Infinity." The Doctor muttered. The Infinity Corporation, does it have anything to do with that?"_

_"I…I don't know. All I saw was a spaceship, apparently abandoned except for a little girl. A human girl."_

_"That's Rachel." The Doctor told her. His hearts were sinking as he realized that the prophecy of the Ood elders had already begun to shape their time stream. "What else, what else did you see?"_

_"A woman, red hair, feisty attitude, a bit too noisy for my taste. She is going to get married, and on her wedding day, she's wearing a pearl earring. Only, it's not really a pearl. It's something else."_

_"Wait a minute. Red hair, loud mouth, Donna! I could be Donna! But why? Why Donna?" The Doctor muttered to himself. He racked his brains but couldn't figure it out right away. "Alright, go on, tell me more!"_

_"A young man, a scientist perhaps. Certainly a bit nerdy looking, dark rimmed glassed, a pale complexion as if he hardly ever sees daylight. I saw him sitting behind a microscope, conducting some kind of experiment. Outside the lab, there is a marble slate mounted on the walls commemorating the founder. He's working in the Rachel Boekbinder's Institute for neurological science..."_

By allowing the Master to save Rachel, the Doctor had created the beginning of a chain-reaction that was going to lead to a dark and disastrous future, unless he could stop it right here and now, starting with Anne. For once he wished that the Master could be less involved with the people they meet on the way. He knew about his feelings for Anne, he had witnessed how his friend had sacrificed his own life for her. He truly loved her. To him they had been husband and wife for decades before the Doctor showed up to shatter their perfect little world. Even the Master's final acceptance of reality had not extinguished that love.

"I trust her Doctor." The Master told him with a heart-felt sincerity. "I trust her with my own life."

Before the Doctor could try to change his mind, the glow of the circular disk reappeared in the ceiling. Someone had shifted the lid.

"Master?" A gentle woman's voice called. "Are you down there?"

"It's Anne." The Master breathed.

"Anne? What is she doing here?" The Doctor panicked.

A rope was flung over the side of the hole and landed with a splash in the water nearby.

"Well, she is here to rescue us, apparently." The Master remarked dryly, and jumped back into the pool.

"Wait! Didn't you say that the plan was to have Donna and Wilf to get us out?" The Doctor objected. "Shouldn't we stay here and wait for them?"

The Master turned around with a most of incredulous look on his face. "Yeah right." He chuckled, and grabbed the rope firmly before he pulled himself up.

"Master!" The Doctor yelled after him, he could feel his stomach tighten into a little ball.

"If you want to stay down here and wait for team redhead and company to pick you up, that's fine, but don't expect me to hang around with you in this cesspit." The Master answered.

"Quickly! Before someone comes to check on you both." Anne urged, and helped the Master to climb over the edge of the hole.

"Are you coming or what?" The Master yelled down to the Doctor.

The Doctor considered his options, and realized he didn't have much choice. He couldn't leave Anne alone with the Master. He didn't trust her and needed to keep an eye on the two of them. So grudgingly, he took the rope and started to clamber up to the light.

"There you go." The Master commented, pulling his friend up when he finally reached the edge of the pit. "Now that wasn't so hard, was it?"

"We meet again Doctor." Anne said with a timid little smile, her green cat eyes gleaming with intelligence.

"Yes, and unfortunately, you're still here." The Doctor commented, straightening his back.

"As I understand it after I've walked through the Master's memories, time is rather an adaptable creation for a time traveler like yourself. In your world, nothing is set in stone." Anne replied calmly.

"And that's where he is wrong." The Doctor said, his eyes burning with determination. "There are things that shouldn't be changed. I've learned that at great costs, a long time ago. He didn't. At least not yet."

"Then let me prove you wrong and my beloved Master right." Anne replied defiantly. She raised the torch above her shoulder to reveal a tunnel in the nearby vault heading out in eastern direction. "This goes to the oldest part of these underground catacombs. Follow me and I will lead you to a safe place to hide."

"Yes, thank you very much Anne, but the Master and I really can't go into hiding right now. We need to go find our friends, don't we Master?" The Doctor urged, looking him straight in the eyes. He had expected at least some loyalty, but the Master just rolled his eyes at him. "We can go with Anne and look for them later. They're perfectly safe in their shimmer disguise. Besides, there are more urgent matters at hand than the whereabouts of your human pets."

"Oh really." The Doctor crossed his arms. "And what in your opinion is more important than the lives of our friends?"

The Master gazed back at the Doctor. The hard sheen in his eyes hazed over with an alarming darkness. "The Watcher, she is in possession of a white point star, and she's going to use it to bring her invisible Lordship back to life."

And with that, the righteous resentment just vanished from the Doctor's face.

_**TBC**_

_**NB: Verse Naberrie made some amazing trailers for my previous stories in the series. Go check them out. You'll find the links to her vids on my profile page.**_

_**Best wishes**_

_**Harold**_


	6. Chapter 6

**CHAPTER 6**

**1.**

The peace was already somewhat restored when Wilf and Donna finally returned to the chapel. They found the Watcher sitting in her chair on the ruined platform with her minions rushing around to carry out her commands. Others checked for damage to the great telescope. They reminded Donna of a colony of ants swarming around their demanding queen.

The old woman raised herself up when she saw Antoine approach. "Did you find him?" She rasped, her voice still raw from the injury that the Master had inflicted on her.

"I praise or Lord's guidance mistress, for I've successfully captured him." Antoine responded with a deep bow.

"Did he have my star?" It was all that really mattered to her.

Antoine shook his head. "No mistress. I fear it is no longer in his possession."

The Watcher ran her skeletal hand over the red patch on her neck and let out a disturbing cry. "We are doomed!" She screeched. "Ohh, bring him to me! That swine! I'll make him talk! I'll burn him. I'll torture him. Pull him apart from limb to limb! He will tell!"

"No! Don't!" Donna blurted out, gaining a frightened look from Wilf.

The Watcher looked at her with narrowing eyes at who appeared to be one of her many cowering minions. "What did you say?" She whispered dangerously.

"The prisoner doesn't have it." Donna stepped forward. Her heart was racing inside her chest, but this was not the time to be a coward. She pointed at Antoine. "He has the star. I saw him hiding it when he was interrogating him."

"Is that true?" The Watched asked, turning her suspicious look on her right hand man.

Antoine lips curled into a nervous smile. He was about to deny everything when the dwarf-monk who had accompanied them down into the cellar suddenly came forward.

"It is true Watcher." The imp testified. "Antoine didn't need to take it from the prisoner. He already had it in his hand."

"Yes yes, he has it!" Wilf added quickly to back them up. "I saw it with my own eyes. They're both telling the truth."

Antoine hurried to change his tactics. "I can assure you my mistress, I was going to offer it to you." He rushed up the stairs to kneel down in front of the old woman. "There was absolutely no doubt in my heart that the star should be brought back to our most revered high priestess." He added hastily, and leaned forward to kiss her hand, but the monks who stood guard behind her raised their swords and forced him back.

"Please…I am our Lord's loyal servant." Antoine cowered.

Watcher only regarded him with contempt.

"Hand it to me." She ordered.

After a short moment of hesitation, Antoine produced the white point star from a small compartment hidden inside his jacket. He dropped the diamond into her waiting hand.

"At last." The Watcher whispered in relief, and closed her boney fingers around the precious artifact. "Oh, so close. So very close." She murmured. Antoine's betrayal slipping from her mind like water from a rock. With the aid of her loyal monks, she strode over to the great telescope where she placed the white diamond inside the metal cylinder, taking great care to align it in the path of the lenses.

A sudden flash of light brightened the stained glass window behind the wooden platform, followed by the electric clap of thunder.

"Listen!" The Watcher called out. "A storm is coming our way. Our Lord's arrival is well prepared. The heavens will now supply us with all the energy we need to fuel the device." With her eyes shining with anticipation, she turned to her minions. "Quickly!" She barked. "Get outside! All of you! Prepare to harvest the lightening. The hour of our master's awakening is upon us! So it has been foretold! So it will come to pass!"

Pretending to be following her orders, Donna and Wilf rushed to leave the chapel with the others. When they crossed the courtyard, they separated from the monks who headed out for the lightening catcher, and sneaked into the stables with the aim to find a rope. The Nobles were so occupied trying to escape the attention of the Watcher's minions that they failed to notice that they were being followed.

**2.**

"So this is it? This your plan?" The Doctor asked not without a hint of sarcasm. "You want to sit here in the dark and wait for the monks to get to our friends while we're hiding out the worst of the storm, like bloody cowards?"

The Master, who sat with his back against a crumbling pillar and had watched his companion walk up and down the vault with ever growing irritation, tightened his jaw and silently counted back from ten before he bothered to answer him. "We're waiting for Anne." He explained with a sigh. "I've promised her that we stay here and wait for her return. You wanted to get to the Watcher. She's only trying to help us."

"What about Wilf and Donna?" The Doctor asked skeptically.

"I don't owe them anything." The Master muttered.

"They have risked their lives to help you."

"Well I didn't bloody ask them, did I?" The Master said sharply, his angered voice bouncing back from the cold walls of the catacomb.

"This is wrong." The Doctor shook his head and continued to stride around nervously. "I can feel it in my bones. We should get back. If Wilf and Donna are discovered they will be in real danger after Antoine find out that the prisoners are missing. He will blame them for everything."

"If you're so eager to get your human pets out, why don't you just go and stop pestering me with your tedious arguments?"

"Because you won't come with me. You'll be here alone with Anne when she returns."

"And that worries you?" The Master laughed. "What do think is going to happen? Is she going to poison my mind? Use her womanly charms to turn me back into a murderous madman?"

"Well, she just might." The Doctor answered. He just didn't understand that from all the people on this planet, the Master had to pick her to trust. The Doctor rested his hands on his hips and stared at his friend. "Why are you shaking your head at me?"

"Because you are a blind optimistic idiot." The Master replied, his voice bitter. "You really think I need her to corrupt me?" He leaned over to the Doctor and for the first time in months, he allowed him to take a glimpse inside his dark and troubled mind. "Madness is always just a whisper away inside my head. I need no encouragement."

The Doctor's hearts froze. "You…You've killed." He was in shock as the Master's crimes were revealed to him through their connection of minds. "To get to me…you've butchered those monks."

"And before you start. I know." The Master sneered, giving him a long look. "I know how you see this world. So don't waste your breath. I've been rid of the drums long enough to know what I have done." He paused for a moment, shutting his eyes. "Still, I have to admit… it came back so easy, like it was second to my nature, and it was so full-filling. It felt good. An instant satisfaction of my rage."

The Doctor remained silent, but slowly shook his head in painful disapproval.

"I used to think that the drums were to blame for everything, but they are not." The Master said. "I know that now Doctor. It had nothing to do with the drums. It never had. I hate because I cannot forgive. I kill because my hearts lust for retribution. I just…don't know anything else." The Master paused when he realize the truth, and glanced up at his startled friend. During his travels with the Doctor, he had talked, mocked, and argued with him continuously, but it seemed that he had never really told him anything that mattered. Today would be the first time.

"Ever since you brought me back from the other side, you've been my mentor." He finally admitted. "You taught me to see the world through your eyes. It never stopped to amaze me how stubborn you are in your belief that you can still, somehow make right what has already grown twisted. You are and always have been my _only_ true friend, but the truth is…" He paused and looked away. "After all these long years…this windswept tree cannot unbend its branches. I lost you for only two days, one short moment without the righteous Doctor by my side and I reverted back into the very beast that you've tried to tame." He looked the Doctor straight in the eyes, his face nothing but painful honesty. "I've enjoyed killing those men." He confessed. "But as I now look back on it. Catch my reflection and see what I can become without your moral chains to bind me… I can tell you, truthfully, that it frightens me..."

"I won't leave you." The Doctor replied determinedly. "I won't let you out of my sight, ever! Not now that I know all this."

"You can't always be there to keep me in line. You promise you will, but you can't. What if one of your human pets needs you? Or most likely, what if you finally get sick of me and decide to leave me to my own misery? What if you disappear again? I need someone by my side Doctor! Someone who can take care of me when you're not around."

"Wait a minute, is this about Anne?"

"She was there after you abandoned me on Gallifrey. Back, in that other reality. She was my wife, my most loyal companion and my moral compass. She had kept me sane during the long nights of the Dalek wars. I need her."

"No! I am not listening to this. You're not yourself right now. You don't know what you want."

"I know exactly what I want. I want Anne. I need her to come with us. I need someone by my side who I can trust to keep me sane!"

"This is twisted logic. Listen to yourself. She is not your insurance against your insanity!"

"The way I see it Doctor, she has been a more reliable companion to me than you have ever been."

The Doctor looked at him for a long moment, his unkind words had stabbed him right through his hearts. If he wanted to, the Master still knew how to hurt him cruelly.

A light cut through the darkness of the vault and Anne appeared, sliding through the tunnel like a ghost. Her pale face was illuminated by the glow of the torch she carried, while her green cat-eyes shone in the dark.

"I've checked the passages upstairs." She told them. "There is a storm coming. The Watcher sent everyone away to collect the lightening, so the way is clear. If you still want to go to the chapel and retrieve the white point star, follow me."

The Doctor remained suspicious, but the Master followed the Tudor queen without a moment of hesitation. He ventured into the next passageway, leaving the Doctor very little choice but to go after him.

_Remember what I've told you._ The Doctor told him through his mind_. Don't let your heart cloud your judgments. You may not believe me, but on my word, I know there is good in you. _

_I won't abandon you my old friend, whatever horrible crimes you may commit._

_I won't leave you. _

_But I will stop you._

The Master returned him a long hard look before he turned away.

**3.**

"Do you think this rope is long enough?" Donna glanced back at Wilf. They were making their way down into the Roman catacombs with Donna leading the way with a lit torch, while Wilf carried a coil of rope over his shoulder.

"It's sure heavy enough. Should be a meter or eight in here." Wilf answered.

Feeling jitterish, Donna kept looking back over her shoulder to make sure that no-one was following them. She couldn't help it. These underground spaces kept playing tricks on her. She heard her own footsteps falling closely behind as the echoes bounced back from the curved walls.

"Here." Wilf handed her one end of the rope while he rolled out the rest and let it fall down by his feet like a long lazy serpent. "Get this to the pit. I am going to tie up the other end." He disappeared out of the circle of light for a moment, while Donna struggled to keep hold of the torch while removing the heavy lid with her free hand. She had it half shifted from the pit when the echoes of footsteps returned, cutting through the silence like a knife.

"Granddad, is that you?" She called out. Her heart stopped for a moment when she picked up the sound of heavy breathing in the back of her neck. Slowly, she turned around.

Antoine greeted at her with a wicked grin. "You little rat. I knew you were trying to do something behind my back." Before Donna could flee, Antoine grabbed her by her hood and hit her so hard that she fell down.

"You dirty snitch! Why did you tell the Watcher that I had the star? Are you working for the Timelords now?" He kicked her in the stomach, attacking her without any restrain in strength. Never in her life had Donna experienced such brutality. Fear and agony took hold of her as she rolled over the floor with her arms crossed over her face, trying to dodge his vicious blows. With her vision blurred, she just saw Wilf was about to come out of hiding to come to her aid. Crawling over the wet flagstone floor, she shook her head at her granddad, trying to make him stay where he was. Then she heard the metal lid scrape over the stones and she was picked up by Antoine and dragged over the pit till she dangled with her head and shoulders over the edge.

"Doctor!" Antoine yelled down almost triumphantly. "I've found one of your accomplices. One of our own brethren nonetheless!" His voice turned dangerous. "Why is he helping you? Did you brainwash this termite?"

He waited futilely for a response. Then he grabbed his knife.

"Doctor! Speak or I am going to cut a third breathing hole into this ugly face. Do you hear?" But down the well, it remained silent.

His suspicion roused, Antoine picked up the torch that Donna had dropped on the floor. It was still burning. Sweeping the light over the bottom of the pit below, it revealed the murky sewage water of the cesspit, but it no longer contained the prisoners.

"The bastard sons of whores! They've escaped!" With a rough hand, he picked up the wounded monk from the floor and flung him against the wall. "Where are they?" Too weak to speak, Donna just shook her head at him while the gunman kept shaking her like a ragdoll. "Where are the prisoners? Who set them free? Tell me!"

In the shadows, she caught the tortured look in Wilf's eyes. _Don't. Please don't come for me. _She begged him in silence. _Don't put yourself in danger. Go and find the Doctor. Go!_

"If you don't want to talk to me, you might want to explain this to the Watcher." Antoine hissed, and with a vicious blow on the side of her head, Donna was propelled into unconsciousness.

**4.**

"Quickly, this way!" Anne led the two Timelords through the corridors, passing through countless rooms as they made they way to the chapel. They arrived in the hall of mirrors. The long hallway was lit by a row of chandeliers, while the mirrors that lined the wall reflected the dark windows at the opposite side. Outside, the night had fallen, and in the starless sky, a storm was brewing. The first fat drops of rain splattered against the glass.

Anne's conscience suddenly called out to her, and she shot a fleeting glance at the Master, but he failed to notice her hesitation. It allowed her to regain her strength, and the Tudor queen went into the chamber with both Timelords by her side. Her heart rattled when a lightening bolt cracked the ink-black sky, followed by the roar of thunder and the downpour of rain clattering on the windows.

As she went by the row of mirrors, her reflection grew long and slender, transforming into a hooded figure with thin skeletal limbs and two burning blue orbs for eyes. She stopped in her tracks when Death stepped into the grand chamber through a ring of shockwaves that rippled the mirror surfaces.

His shadow loomed over the two Timelords like a dark hand stretching out from beyond the grave.

Recognizing their foe, the Doctor stepped protectively in front of the Master.

"No. You cannot do this." The Master muttered, as he realized who he was facing. "You cannot come to claim me. This is not fair. We had an agreement!"

I know nothing about such an agreement. Death answered, his solemn voice joined by the crack of thunder.

"Are you getting so ancient that your wits have deserted you? You've made me sacrifice Lucy in exchange of my own wretched life! Do I still not have not paid you enough?" He cried out, his eyes blazing.

I DO NOT LIE. Death stated.

The Doctor pulled the Master back by his sleeve. "I don't think he's lying either." He whispered. "This guy must have been trying to catch up with you for centuries. He has not done anything to Lucy yet."

"But he still wants me dead."

"Yeah, well a lot of people want you dead in this place. Nothing new here, but talk about bad timing." The Doctor muttered.

I'VE COME TO REMOVE THE TIMELORD CALLED THE MASTER FROM THE TIMESTREAM. I HAVE ALSO COME TO COLLECT THE SOUL OF THE TUDOR QUEEN.

"You want to take the Tudor queen as well?" The Doctor raised a surprised eyebrow at him. "Well, I suppose she is indeed long pass her storage life. So I can get that." The Doctor faked a smile, earning him a most anxious look from Anne. It is a tactic he had learned in all those years of stumbling into danger. When threatened, face death with a smile and you might survive to tell the tale.

"And I do get why you want _him_." He pointed with his thumb at the Master who kept glaring at the creature with aggressive resentment and a lack of fear that the Doctor found most worrying. "What I don't understand is why the ex-queen Anne Boleyn is so important. People keep moving her around the time-stream like she's some vital piece in a game of chess." The silly grin disappeared from his face. "Why did your masters order her to be removed?"

SHE IS HIS VESSEL.

"What the bloody hell does that mean?" The Master sneered. "A vessel for what?"

A VESSEL FOR HIS SOUL. Death turned his head and gazed with his cobalt eyes at the Master. A sensation of a cold knife scraping over his backbone washed over him and his body froze. In the Grim Reaper's eyes he caught a glimpse of the future, the war-torn world from which this creature was born. He saw the outcome of a horrendous battle. Thousands of men lay dying in agony in fields that had turned red with their blood. Their cries rang inside his ears as the crows descend on their corpses to feast.

_Look Timelord. Look at this broken world of death and decay. REMEMBER IT. this will be your LEGACY._

Frantic, the Master pushed the blood-drenched images out of his mind. For his sanity's sake, he did not want to see more. _Certainly this cannot be true…How I can I ever be responsible for that carnage?_

"You're lying! I have changed. I am not that man anymore. I have nothing to do with that future!"

YOU HAVE MEND, Brought back from the dead and nurtured TO GROW by the good doctor. BUT _HE_ WILL BREAK YOU AGAIN. INSIDE HIS COLD TOMB, SLEEPING AMIDS THE DEAD STARS FOR THOUSANDS OF YEARS, HE HAS BEEN WAITING. SOON HE WILL RISE from his grave, AND WHEN HE DOES, _YOU _WILL FALL.

"No." His hearts ran cold with fear when he realized what the reaper was trying to tell him. _That man is dead. He has sealed himself inside his tomb the day the sky above Gallifrey burned. He cannot return. He cannot…Please let it not be so…_

Death turned to Anne who was backing away into the mirror wall.

YOUR MERCY TO HER WILL BE YOUR DOWNFALL.

The Master shook his head fervently. "Anne will _not_ betray me."

OUR PATHS WOULD NOT HAVE CROSSED TODAY IF IT WAS NOT FOR THE TUDOR QUEEN.

The Master gazed at Anne who averted her eyes from him. "I'm sorry my love." She admitted. "Please forgive me, I had to bring you to him. I had no choice, it was either my life or yours."

SHE HAS ALREADY BETRAYED YOU ONCE. SHE WILL BETRAY YOU AGAIN.

"Enough!" The Master shouted. "A life for a life, is that your only trick in the book?" Rage was taking control over fear, while Anne's betrayal stung like a fresh wound in his hearts. "You can't control me. Not with your cheap mindtricks." He shot an accusing glance at Anne. _My most loyal companion._ He thought bitterly. _That is what you get for trusting a woman. Have you learned nothing from Chanto's and Lucy's bullets, you stupid old fool?_

"I am afraid I have to disappoint you Anne." His voice was cold as ice. "This creature won't keep his promise. Your life is still in danger."

"What?" Anne snapped, her voice shrill. "But he gave me his word?"

A most spiteful smile crossed the Master's lips. "Isn't that true, skeleton man? Am I not right to assume you won't allow anyone of us to walk away from this alive?"

Death shook his head slowly. THE CONSEQUENCES OF THE QUEEN'S EXISTENCE ARE TOO GREAT. I CANNOT ALLOW IT.

"There is your truth." The Master scolded. "You're as good as dead, my_ darling _wife."

Anne swirled around and fled. The reaper didn't go after her, but raised his scythe and thumped the back of the wooden handle on the floor. The impact split the marble and the cracks spread towards the sides. It crept up the mirror walls, breaking the reflective surface into a hundred webs. The silver lines that made up the breaks then began to budge and bulge till they seemed swollen, pregnant with dark shadows. Monsters were caught inside the glass webs and were struggling to get out. She screamed when one of the mirrors split apart and an insectoid claw came through. It lashed out at her like a cat's paw. When she raised her arm to defend herself, it slashed straight through her sleeve and skin.

"Anne!" The Master cried out. "Get away from those mirrors!" His resentment towards her was quickly forgotten when he realized that her life was in real danger. She looked at the red bloom on her sleeve with horror, but was too scared to move away. All those frightful creatures, those monsters from beyond the stars that she had seen inside the Master's mind, have suddenly come to life.

The Master tried to rush to her when he found his own path blocked by a giant black spider crawling out of the mirror. Thin threads of liquid glass still clung to the black and hairy head. The spider rised up, and from the back of her abdomen, she shot a line of glue-like silk at the Master that wrapped around his ankle. With one powerful sweep, the creature pulled him to the floor and dragged him to her. He clawed at the floorboards, trying to grab hold to whatever came within his reach. His fingers just closed around the leg of a heavy wooden table, when he saw a giant mantis emerge from the second mirror nearest to Anne. The monstrous stick-like insect launched itself at the terrified Tudor queen.

"Doctor! Don't just stand there, help her!" The Master yelled. To his confusion, the Doctor grabbed a chair and raced to the mirror wall, away from Anne. "What the hell are you doing?"

"The mirrors! That's what stabilizing his physical form. Just like the paintings in lord Cole's mansion, the Reaper can only exist in this world because he does not dwell too far away from his own. Destroy the mirrors, and the link is broken!" The Doctor ran towards the mirrors, ready to smash them in, but before he could throw the chair, the cracked web bugled outward and a scorpion the size of a minivan emerged. He headed straight for the Doctor, swinging its tail. The Doctor dived, and only just missed the creature's poisonous sting. He rolled over the floor while the monster scorpion kept attacking, stabbing angry holes into the wooden boards till he was trapped in a corner. When the sting came down for him, he raised the chair like a shield, and the nasty hook remained stuck in the wood. Enraged, the scorpion pulled the chair out of his hands and smashed it to pieces, leaving the Doctor defenseless for its next assault.

It was just then that the Doctor heard someone call out to his name. He turned his head and saw one of the pox-marked monks run up to his aid. "Doctor! Catch!" Wilf yelled and threw the sonic screwdriver. "You need to unlock it first!"

That didn't pose a challenge. He caught his trusted sonic in mid air and with a quick twist he rebooted it before taking an aim at the mirror that gave birth to the nightmare scorpion. A shrill, eardrum splitting sound came from the tip. It shattered the spiderweb and tore the mirror down in a blizzard of shards.

When the tail of the nightmare scorpion struck down at his chest, it too splintered into a thousand glass fragments that rained down over the Timelord.

"Right." The Doctor jumped back up, brushing the tiny shards from his shirt. "One down, two more to go." He rushed in the direction of the Master.

_No not me. Why do you come for me? Help her first!_ His hearts jittered when the wooden leg slipped between his sweaty fingers and the pull on his limb made him slide over the floor on his back. From the corner of his eyes, he caught Anne backing further away into the wall, the insect's claw only inches away from her face, ready to rip it to bloody ribbons.

"Cover your ears!" The Doctor warned and pointed the sonic at the mirrors behind the spider.

The sound that came from the sonic was like the screech of a high-strung violin or the scratching of nails over a blackboard, but then amplified by a million times in volume. Anne and Wilf covered their ears, fearing that their eardrums might split, while the Master grimaced, but kept his eyes on the nightmare creatures, who trembled and shrieked as the sound shattered all of the mirrors in the great hall. Seconds later, the creatures themselves followed, combusting into glittering clouds of shards.

The Doctor shut down the sonic. "Oh I do hope that eerie ring in my ears will soon clear up." He helped the Master back on his feet. "Still, when traveling with you, there ought to be times when being deaf is an advantage." He half-joked, and noticed the change in the Master's face. Words came tumbling from his mouth but the Doctor could not hear him clearly. "What? What is it?"

Anne's cry came through muffled, but the Doctor's instinct had already kicked. He spun around and saw how the Grim Reaper swept over the terrified queen, his dark robe fluttering behind him like a raven's wings. He ran to her, but as he raised his sonic screwdriver, the Reaper disappeared inside a portrait of king Louis the 15th. As soon as the Reaper touched the canvas it turned dark. The flesh melted away from the bones of the old ruler, while the colorful velvet and lace in the royal outfit transformed into a black cloak. The last to change were the eyes, the brown in the irises fading till they were blue and it was DEATH, who stared into the great hall with two icey orbs of fire.

The Doctor immediately whirred the sonic over the edges of the canvas, sealing the Reaper inside. It was only when the job was finished and had time to took a few steps back that he recognized the painting.

"Lord Cole's painting of the Reaper." He muttered. _So this is how it came to be._ It looked exactly like when he had first set eyes on it in the London art gallery, centuries later.

A queasy feeling fought in his stomach, just when he saw the Master approach with angry strides. He picked up a burning candle from a side table and waved it at the gilded frame.

"Stop it! What are you doing?" He grabbed him before the wood could catch fire.

"Let go!" The Master's snarled. "I am going to stop this! Don't you see? Everything that happened to Lucy won't happen if I destroy him now."

"Have you learned nothing? You can't change your own timeline! The Reaper is now part of your past as much as your dead wife."

"He killed her!" The Master spat.

The Doctor gazed at him, his eyes unflinching. "I am sorry my friend, but you know that is not true."

The Master bit his lips together till they were but a thin white line. _No. Of course it wasn't true. _His mind had not yet deteriorated to such a state that he had forgotten this. Slowly, he lowered the candle, the rage subsiding. The Doctor's words of reason had leached it out of him like some black poison from his bloodstream. _So this is how it felt to have a conscience._ He thought bitterly. This is what the Doctor had to suffer, day and night. _It was enough to drive a weaker man insane._

"Anne." He suddenly remembered he still had his living wife to take care of. "Where is Anne?" It did not took him long to realize that she had fled.

She must still be frightened, not of the Reaper, but of _him_. How could she ever think that he was capable to harm her? _She knows you._ The answer came to him bluntly. _She looked inside your head and saw all the ugly things that you've done. She knows you better than you know yourself. Of course she ran. Run away from the monster while you still can._

"She is not safe on her own. I have to find her." He told the Doctor.

"No don't! We shouldn't split up." He was about to come after him, when Wilf appeared. "Doctor! Oh Doctor! I am so glad to find you."

"Wilf!" He exclaimed, happy to see his comrade again. "It's been a long time I've seen a shimmer that good."

"You recognize me?" The old man let a sigh of relief.

"Of course I do! You're wearing a physical alteration cloak. Function 28 on the sonic. One of my favorites! But here, let me help you _un-_shimmer."

The Doctor whirred the sonic over Wilf and within a blink of an eye, restored him to his own form. He was immediately alarmed when he saw the anguished expression on Wilfred's face and finally realized that Donna was not with him. "What's going on?" He looked around for the redhead. "Where is Donna?"

"She's taken by that fiend, that French bloke who stabbed the Master. He found us after we sneaked back to the dungeon to get you guys out. Only you weren't there anymore. That bastard kicked and hit my granddaughter! I saw her lying on the ground. He kicked her so hard, she couldn't move." Wilf was trembling all over when he recalled Antoine's brutal attack. "I couldn't save her. I wanted to, but she wanted me to find you…you have to help her Doctor."

"Wilf! Calm down. Tell where he went with her."

The old man pressed his fist on his lower lip. "He said he was going to bring her to the Watcher. In the old chapel."

"The Watcher, the Watcher in the chapel." The Doctor realized that the Master had vanished. _That impatient idiot_! _I told him to stay together._ _This is not good. Not good at all. Things are falling apart. _A dark ominous feeling crept up on him, and River's warning threw dark shadows over his strength and resolve, but he could not let the old man know. To him, the Doctor still had all the answers. He was his only hope. "Right, we're going to get Donna." He told him with determination burning in his eyes. "Show me the way Wilf, quickly."

**5.**

The rain had turned into a full-blown storm. Endless drops clattered down from the hole in the ceiling onto the marble floor, which had turned shiny and wet, while damp patches crept over the cold walls of the cathedral. The priestess of the secret order raised herself out of her chair with the aid of her servants. Only a handful of the Watcher's minions had remained by her side, the rest of them had been sent out to harvest lightening. There was no shortage of that for sure. Every minute or so a flash of lightening could be seen that brightened the sky.

Down on bended knees in front of her and absolutely terrified, was Donna still in her shimmer disguise. Antoine had marked her as a traitor, responsible for the disappearance of the two prisoners. She was now left at old woman's mercy while the French gunman held a dagger at her throat.

"I am going to ask you one last time." The trembling carcass of a woman hissed impatiently. "Where is the Timelord?"

Donna didn't know, nor was she going to tell her anything. Her silence further enraged the Watcher, who screamed out her frustrations, spittle flying from her parched lips.

"Shall I slit his throat?" Antoine offered, and Donna felt the tip of the dagger break her skin, drawing a thin trickle of blood.

"What good is taking this wretch's life? It's the Timelord I need. Without him, our Lord's prophecy will go unfulfilled. We cannot perform the sacred ritual without my Lord's last surviving blood." She licked her cracked lips and stared up at the circle of sky that was visible through the opening in the ceiling. "Oh, there is not much time." She croaked. "Soon the storm will pass and the clouds will part to reveal the alignment of constellations. You must find the Doctor, before I can sit on my throne and receive my Lord's light. GO! Turn every stone in this cursed castle if you must, but bring him to me! Or else bring back your own useless head on a tray!"

"Don't worry. I shall return with the Timelord." Antoine lifted the blade. "What shall be done with the traitor?"

"That lowly worm! Fetter him in chains. He might still talk with enough persuasion. If not, once the ritual is over and my Lord and I are one, I could use some nourishment. The life source of many are needed to restore me to the fair bride who is truly worthy of my Lord's majesty."

Who is she kidding? No human sacrifice could ever make her into a beauty queen._ Your heart is rotten, and so are your looks. _Donna thought, and she would have said it, if it wasn't for the fresh memory of Antoine's blade on her throat. Two of the Watcher's armed monks came for her and dragged her to the side. She was tied up with chains to a pillar, her hands locked behind her back.

_What if I die here?_ _What if that crazy bitch really kills me while I am still wearing this stupid shimmer? Will the Doctor be able to recognize me? Will he even ever find out that I was murdered?_ She shivered, her head still spun from the beating she had received from Antoine, the blood from her wounds mixing with the rain. _Now you're being crazy. Don't be so stupid. You're not going to die. Gramps will find him first. _

The Doctor will get her out and get rid of the monsters. He always did.

When has that crazy spaceman ever failed her_?_

**6.**

Anne was running again, fleeing from the man who, in another world and time, she had once called husband. She was always running it seems, trying to save herself from yet another man's wrath. She must be cursed to constantly provoke the fury of her lords, but then, she was never smart enough to make a wise choice in marriage. Henry was a merciless king to those who betrayed him, but he still was noble enough to grand to her a clean death by the sword. The Master however, had in his long blood-drenched past, never shown such grace to those at his mercy. Her Lord of Time was a mad sadistic tyrant, who will hunt down the ones who have wronged him, even if he has to descend into the seven pits of hell himself. She had seen what he did to his enemies. _I should not expect a quick and merciful death from him._

Guards, she was looking for guards. Where was everyone? The two Timelords were still prisoners of the secret order, she just had to find the Watcher's minions and they will protect her from her avenging Lord. Mad with fear, she ignored the calls of the Master who was closing in on her quickly. She tripped over her own satin slippers and almost fell when a hand, strong and callous, grabbed her by the arm and brought her back in balance. She gazed up and looked right in the gunman's scarred face.

"Antoine, oh thank the high Lord, it's you!" She blurted, seizing him like she was a woman lost at sea and drowning. "The prisoner has escaped. He's after me. You have to protect me, please!"

Antoine lips twisted into a grim imitation of a smile. "As you wish, my lady." He took his dagger out from his sheath.

"No, oh no, that will not be enough." She said, half in panic. "You don't understand. He is dangerous. You don't know what he can do. You need a gun or…or a longsword."

"Now why would I need those? Why exhaust myself in an armed battle with a man who cannot die, if all I need to do to control him, is this?" His hand moved as fast as lightening, and the blade was on her throat. She looked down on it, eyes wide with disbelief, and saw that the crusted edge was smeared with blood.

"But you have sworn to protect me. Why are you doing this?"

"I have sworn to serve my Lord. I am only following the path that he has set out for me." He answered, and yanked her golden hair back to bear more neck. "_Don't _come any closer Timelord." He told the Master, who approached him with fury burning in his dark eyes. "Or else watch me make a pretty red smile on her virgin skin."

"Let her go. It's me you want. You don't need her." The Master whispered.

"Au contraire. I need you both." Antoine replied, walking backwards slowly with his hostage. "My Lord's arrival is almost upon us, and we are short of a Timelord and a Tudor queen." He backed away through the doorway into the next chamber. "Follow me lord Master, and you may reclaim your wife." Swift and agile as a cat, he turned the corner and disappeared with Anne, leaving the Master little choice but to go after him.

When they reached the entrance of the chapel the gunman stopped right in front of the threshold. The massive oak doors were closed, but the Master could hear the rain pour down on the other side from the open roof that left the chamber open to the elements.

_One slip in his guard, that's all it takes. I will be on him, twist his hand and break the rat's wrist. I'll plunge his own dagger into his fat French neck. _The Master kept his eyes on Anne's face that had become white with fear. _Why did you have to run back to your false guarddog for protection? I would never hurt you. I can't._

"Give her up now." The Master told Antoine, his voice a dangerous low whisper. "And I might leave enough of your corpse intact for a decent burial, if not…you've seen how I made that red mess out of your miserable minions."

"Most threatening words, but that's all they are, just words. As long as I have her, I know I am safe." Antoine smiled slyly. "You still don't understand, do you? You don't see the grand scheme, the brilliance in my Lord's plans. You're not in control here Timelord. My master is, and he's been playing with you a very _very _long time."

"Who is your master?" His heartbeat quickened.

But Antoine just grinned and pushed backwards. One of the heavy doors opened to a thin gap.

"My lady!" Antoine screamed into the chapel. "I've found him! I've apprehended the Timelord! You can now proceed with the ritual!"

Inside the wet hall, seated on her throne on the raised podium directly under the telescope contraption, the priestess of the sacred order twisted her lips into a most hideous smile.

"Finally the time is upon us! We can receive our Lord!" Exhilarated, she waved her skeletal hand at the four remaining monks. "Activate the device! Use all the power we've reaped from the storm! Align the crystals with the stars of the Hydra constellation, and let the white point star guide him to me."

The contraption roared to life. The rain had finally ceased and the clouds were parting, to reveal a pitch-black blanket, scattered with icy constellations. The huge barrel of lenses of the inverted telescope captured the light of the stars in the western sky and projected it into a golden beam that engulfed the Watcher. Her body tightened, and she dug her claw-like hands into the wooden arms of her seat when the intense light hit her.

"What's happening?" Anne squeaked, still forced by her captor to stay with her back turned to the opening, she couldn't see what was going on inside.

Bolts of energy shot like frosted silver arms from the center and collided with the wet walls where it crept inside the stones. Angry blue flashes slivered around the cathedral, turning it into a giant electrified cage.

The heel of Antoine's boots just brushed over the wood of the door and it was enough to ignite a huge spark that made the gunman flinch.

"Stop moving! You're gonna get her killed!" The Master warned him. The whole system was overflowing with excess energy. One wrong step and that idiot will be electrocuted, taking Anne with to a horrific death. His hearts fluttered madly when the Frenchman pushed Anne closer to the high doors.

"Wait! Wait! Harm her and I swear I will cut to shreds!"

"Oh I am not going to hurt your precious wife. My Lord has a higher purpose for her, just like he has for you." He gave the Master a telltale smile. "Since you are so clever, let me amuse you with a riddle. What is beastly and dangerous, but easy to fool?"

"What?"

The grin widened into a loathsome smirk. "A nasty mongrel…going after his bone." Antoine answered, and gave Anne a short sharp shove.

The Master barely had time to act. When he saw Anne disappear through the narrow gap he dived after her. His left arm grazed the electrified wooden surface, and he cried out when a freezing burn stung through his elbow and ran down his limb like a river of ice. A moment later, he was rolling over the wet floor in the cathedral, paralyzed by pain. Anne was nearby, lying face down and breathing hard, but luckily, she seemed otherwise unharmed.

"What is this?"

The Master gazed up the wooden platform where the ancient priestess was engulfed in a bright golden glow.

"YOU IDIOT!" Her eyes were bulging out as she screamed. "You incompetent fool! You brought me the wrong man!"

"I didn't make a mistake, my lady." Antoine replied mockingly through the opening.

"This is not the Timelord! This is that thieving rat! He stole my precious star!"

"Oh but he is. He is the Timelord called the Master. Now everything is complete for our Lord's return."

"Antoine, I order you, remove him! He will to ruin everything! Antoine! Antoine! What are you doing?"

With all of his strength, the gunman hurtled his shoulder against the heavy wooden panel. Daggers of ice slit through his muscles and he let out a scream of pure agony, but he succeeded in creating enough momentum, and the high door slam shut with a loud bang.

_We're trapped._ The Master thought. _That son of bitch locked us in with his bat-shit crazy mistress. _

"Kill him!" The Watcher screamed with eyes wild with bloodlust. "Him and the Tudor queen. Kill them both!"

The four remaining monks hurried down the steps of the platform with daggers and longswords in their hands. A blade flashed over the Master's head, aimed to cut through his shoulder. He caught it flat between his hands instead. The blade kept going forward, slicing his palms till his fingers closed around the hilt of the weapon. He then pulled the sword out of the monk's hand, turned it around in his own blood-drenched hands, and stabbed it under the man's chin. The point emerged at the back of the man's head, and the monk fell down with a fountain of crimson spurting out of his skull.

_Blood. There is so much blood. My hands shall never be clean again._

The ghost of the Reaper filled his head with the terrifying visions of the future battlefields under a bloodred sky.

_There was no hope for him. No redemption. The crimson that tainted his skin was there to stay_.

His hearts were beating fast, but he felt strangely calm when he pulled out the blood-smeared blade. Wielded the sword in his bloody hand, he cut and sliced and hacked through his remaining opponents until the very last of them had fallen.

_Rivers of blood. A world turned red. _

Like in a dream, he stepped over the corpses drowning in still pools of precious crimson, and made his way to the Watcher, grinning madly at her as he climbed up the steps.

"Your dogs are dead." He whispered. "It's time for the mistress to follow."

"NO! No!" The Watcher screamed, more enraged than fearful, but helpless nonetheless. "No! Not now! This is not what was supposed to happen. My lord has foretold…"

The Master raised the sword, ready to plunge it into the back of her neck.

_How dare you to raise a sword at me?_

The voice entered his head, low and threatening and cold, like the wind sweeping over a graveyard at midnight. He halted, his grip on the hilt turning to stone. His breath stalled in his lungs.

_How dare you to raise a sword at the lord of Time?_

The visions tore through him like a red-hot blaze. He was back inside the tower of the Lord President, locked in the cage that was engulfed by fire. It was the final days of Gallifrey, the end of the time of the Timelords, and he was to become the last victim of Rassilon's tyranny.

"Burn with me." Rassilon's voice was like cruel cold steel. "Burn like your betters. Suffer the searing of flesh and the blackening of skin. BURN!"

He rolled inside the metal prison, his tormented body wriggling and twisting, mad to escape the horrific pain while the sickening sweet stench of his own cooked flesh filled his nostrils, and all the time _he_ was gazing down greedily at him through the bars, his grey eyes unblinking, forever condemning. Forever without mercy.

_BURN My Lord Master. BURN with me! _

The sword fell through his fingers. He clutched his head and staggered back, absolutely horrified.

"Get out! Get out! Get out of my head!" The Master roared. His whole body was trembling as if he was submerged in an icy river. Someone was calling out his name, but he was hardly aware of it. All he saw was Rassilon's face. Those cruel eyes looking at him, while his flesh melting away from his bones.

"Oh my good Lord, my good _vengeful _Lord!" The Watcher laughed as she watched her nemesis recoil in fear. "Punish this insolent fool who dares to raise his hand on us! Let him suffer your fury! Let him burn!" She raised her claw-like hand and a blast of raw energy hit the Master in the chest and sent him rolling down the steps. "Burn him!" The Watcher laughed, her old wrinkled face glowed feverishly red. The mouth that moved was that of the old woman, but it were Rassilon's words that came pouring out. "Burn! Lord Master! BURN!"

"It can't be." The Master muttered, crawling back up. "It can't be you. You've sealed yourself inside your tomb on the final day of reckoning. You BURNT! Your remains are scattered among the dust of Gallifrey!"

"What is dead may never die. Surely a man like you would know the true meaning of our blessing and curse." Rassilon and the Watcher replied. Her eyes were two black lumps of burning coal, but it were _his_ eyes that gazed right into his frightened and tormented soul.

"I've risen again Lord Master, harder and stronger than before!"

**7.**

Following Wilf meant that the Doctor only arrived at the entrance of the chapel after a chaotic detour. The high doors were shut and the old man was about to rush forward and pull them wide open when the Doctor stopped him abruptly.

"Don't touch the door handles!" The Timelord warned. He tasted a strong metallic tang in the air that alarmed him. "Get back, don't touch anything!"

"But Donna is inside." Wilf reached out for the door handle when a bolt of energy bridged the short distance between the metal and his fingers and gave him a nasty shock. Wilf shrieked as the Doctor pulled him back to a safer distance.

"What the bloody heck is going on here?" Wilf asked.

"Someone must have released all of that energy that the monks have caught during the thunder storm. It's leaking from inside the chapel. The whole wall is crackling. One touch and you'll get electrocuted." The Doctor noticed the dark figure sitting in the corner on the floor. It had the shape of a man, but the skin was a broken surface of black and red, his face a mess with a lipless hole for a mouth and a black bulbous stump for a nose, while smoke still rose from his scorched scalp. The only features that were still intact were the eyes, and they looked at the Doctor with a resentful anger that only a dying man would have for the living.

"Who is that poor creature?" Wilf asked, shocked by the man's horrific appearance.

"_That_ is your granddaughter's captor. Or was. That man is dying, and it's not an easy death." He went over to Antoine and crouched down by his side. "What happened? Who did this?" He asked, although he dreaded to hear the truth. _Don't let it be the Master. _He begged._ Please don't let it be him._

"Doctor." The burnt man whispered in recognition, and he returned him a lipless smile that cracked the corners of his mouth. "Oh you're late. Far too late."

"Tell me who did this to you."

"That mad old witch who called herself the high priestess of our order, she was not the only one to whom our Lord spoke. I've been listening to him since I was a child and was blessed with his true prophecy. I knew that his return would require a sacrifice. I was more than willing to give my life to him."

The Doctor's eyebrows rose in bafflement. "You did this to yourself?"

"I fulfilled my duty to my Lord. The ceremony required the Tudor queen, I brought her to him, together with the last of his blood."

"The last of his bl…" The Doctor's eyes turned large and white. "Anne and the Master. You're like this because it was you who shut the doors and trapped them both inside with the mad Watcher."

The Doctor's breath stalled when he watched how Antoine's horrific face turned into a grinning black skull. "The Tudor queen is our Lord's true bride." He whispered. "And the Master shall be her salvation."

**8.**

It was not until the mad laughter of the Watcher suddenly turned into a long hideous scream that the Master finally realized what was happening. The old woman was clawing at her face, her nails working like talons and flaying strips of skin from her cheeks till streams of blood flowed through her fingers, crawling like red worms down her hands and wrists and into her sleeves.

"I am burning!" She screamed in both her Lord's and her own voice. "Oh my lord! I am burning! That sound! Oh that horrible sound. Get it out! Get it out! GET IT OUT!"

But Rassilon was not going leave her alone. He had waited so long, lying in his cold grave among the dead stars, he had traveled so far on the sound of the corruptive drums, now that the white point star had finally guided him to his resurrection, he was not going to let a miserable old wench ruin everything. Not now he could almost taste the sweet fruit of life on his cold dead lips. He continued to pour all of the wisdom of the universe into her head, the knowledge of all that once was, all that is, and all that shall be. He penetrated her frail and brittle body the very essence of a Timelord…and was destroying her.

"A Timelord metacrisis…" The Master whispered, his eyes shining with hope. "You're ancient bride can't handle this. Oh you're making a huge mistake! You can't force the entire universe into a puny human brain!"

The Watcher screamed and wept, pleading to her Lord for mercy. "I am boiling! Stop! Please STOP!" She retched violently and spat out a bubbling mass of concealed blood. Desperate and mad with fear, she turned to the Master. "Help! Help me! Help me please!"

"And why would I?" The Master laughed, madness taking over from sanity. "I rather watch you burn old witch! Die! Die, and take our vainglorious lordship with you!"

"You can't…please…The prophecy…It was foretold….The Doctor….the last of his blood will save us…"

"I am not the Doctor." He told her with steel in his voice as he watched greedily how the old woman suffered. "I am the Master, and I swear on my life I will never let you live to bring Rassilon back."

"NO! NO!" The skin on the Watcher's hands and face blistered like the skin of a fat goose roasting in the oven. Steam began to rise up from her head while the far too familiar sickening stench of roasting human flesh assailed the Master's nose. When her bursting veins and arteries caused her dreadful agony, he could feel his lips turn into a cruel grin, and her dying howls when her internal organs cooked sounded like heaven's music in his ears. To him it was sweet vengeance that Rassilon suffered this horrific demise, and oh how he wished he could prolong his agony. _Die Rassilon._ He thought with black poison in his hearts. _Die, and take your ugly corpse bride with you. Rot with her in the deepest, hottest hell._

Still screaming, the Watcher fell down on her knees. Her eyes popped open from the heat and ran like fat tears of bubbling jelly down her racked cheeks. Her jaw dropped and a bright silver light left her tortured body. When her heart burst, she finally fell silent and toppled over on the floor. The light that had escaped circled around her corpse a few times before it soared down the platform and entered the Tudor queen, a ribbon of silver smoke that crawled into her lungs. She absorbed it with a bright eye stare of surprise and fear.

The Master's flesh turned cold when he met her gaze.

"My lord, what is happening to me?" She clutched her head in agony. She could hear the drums, pounding inside her. Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom. On and on it went, sullen and ceaseless. Boom. Boom. Doom. Doom.

"I know everything. I can see the beginning of time and the end of time. There is so much to know. It's all cramped up inside my head, and I can't, I can't breathe! It hurts! Oh my sweet lord, it hurts so much!"

The Master rushed towards her, cursing Rassilon on the way. He took her in his arms. Although she was terrified, she was too dazed to coil away from him.

"Look at me Anne." He begged.

"I can't." She cried. "I can't see. There is so much inside my head that shields my view from you, all the stars, the planets and the moons…the complete darkness of the universe…I can't see."

_Why? Why was this happening? Why was fate so cruel to him? Of all the creatures of the universe, why did it have to take her?_ With a trembling hand, he stroked her tear-streaked face, a face that he had once kissed every morning, when the first beams of sunlight shone on her soft skin, while yellow spots danced in her loving green eyes.

"Ignore all that." He told her, his heart breaking. _He can't let her suffer the Watcher's same fate. NOT her._ "Follow my voice. I am here. Come back to me. Look at me my love. Look at me."

A light gradually replaced the vacant stare in her green cat-eyes, and for the first time since Rassilon took refuse inside her mind, she truly looked, and saw the grief engraved on his face. "Master." She whispered. "Oh I am so sorry, my love."

"It's all right." His lips curled into a desperate smile. "You're going to be all right. He won't harm you. I won't let it happen. I won't let him take you away from me. You're mine. You're my beautiful, beloved bride."

He swallowed, fighting his tears. "Close your eyes." He whispered, and softly he placed his fingers on her temples.

**9.**

"There's got to be a way to get in!" The Doctor was pacing up and down in front of the locked entrance like a caged lion. "I can hear the machine running. It won't take long before the Watcher has absorbed all of Rassilon's essence. There is no time, we have to stop him!"

"But how? Your screwdriver didn't work." Wilf noted worriedly.

The Doctor rolled the sonic in his hand. He was nervous and frightened. Oh so very frightened.

Antoine was still not finished with dying and gazed with blood shot eyes at the struggling Timelord with cruel amusement. "Give up Doctor. What is happening right now has been foretold. It was written in the stars before any of us were even born. You cannot stop it."

_But if there is still one breath left in me, I will try._ He ignored Antoine snide remark and turned to the high doors where deadly bolts of energy continued to wave over the surface. The sonic was of no use. He needed something stronger to disrupt the energy field.

"You know. He still has the Master's screwdriver." Wilf suddenly realized. "Would that help?"

Immediately Doctor swirled around on his heels and searched through the dying man's scorched clothes, or what was left of it. It didn't take long for the Doctor to retrieve the Master's laser screwdriver. Miraculously, it still looked all right, although the outer casing was slightly damaged.

"Wilf you're life-saver!" The Doctor said with a radiant smile. "Remind me later to kiss you silly when this is all over."

"What are you doing? It won't help your cause. That device is broken." Antoine objected weakly.

"It's not broken. It's locked to prevent people like you from abusing it. You just need to know how to switch it back on." A few clicks and he had the Master's laser unlocked. "Tell me, does anyone of you know what happens when you hold a laser against a sonic screwdriver?" He stared at the perplexed humans with an excited glint in his eyes.

"What happens?" Wilf asked.

"I have absolutely no idea." The Doctor grinned and fired both the sonic and the laser screwdriver, letting the red and the blue beam collide on the target.

**10.**

As the Master reached inside Anne's mind and forced back the consciousness of the more powerful Timelord, he vividly experienced their memories. He saw Anne's glorious day of crowning and the creation of Gallifrey. He witnessed it all: The first time when the blushing queen held her newborn daughter Elizabeth in her arms. Rassilon, at the declaration of the Timewar. The last lonely night Anne spent in her cell in the tower of London. The last light of a dying world as the tomb was closed above Rassilon's head, and the darkness that followed. A darkness that was cold and complete, and would have lasted for an eternity, if it were not for the drums. The drums were everywhere, beating relentlessly from every far corner of the universe, his old and most faithful companions. Guided by the lights of the stars, they've searched the galaxies for the last descendents of Gallifrey. Here on this tiny blue speck of a planet they have found them, the Doctor and the Master, the lord president Rassilon's last living blood, and it was here where he would find a way to return and breathe back life in the dust of his bones.

The past was bright and frightening, and it hurt. It hurt so much.

_You cannot fight me._ Rassilon whispered._ I have created you. I gave you this immortal life and I can take it away. Your life is mine! MINE!_

He was blasted with horrific experiences, a tortuous succession of fire and blood that left the Master paralyzed in both body and mind. He let go of Anne and tumbled backwards, her cries smothered by the merciless drums. As the darkness took him, the last thing he saw was one of Rassilon's memories, when he was gazing through the blackened bar of his cage to watch the Master burn in sea of flames.

**11.**

The red and blue beams of the laser and the sonic screwdriver melted into one, and finally broke through the dense wall of static energy. The Doctor had half a heart beat to react before it would seal itself again. He rushed forward and smashed his shoulder against the high door, forced it to open and crashed into the other side. Inside the cathedral the machine was still running, and a bright bundle of light shone from the conic contraption down on the blackened seat. In front of it, he discovered the dead Watcher with black smoke rising from her scorched remains.

"Doctor! Doctor! I am here!"

He quickly turned around and found Donna tied up to a column with a thick chain around her middle. She was still wearing her shimmer disguise, but the Doctor had no trouble recognizing her. A quick whirr with the sonic and he had returned her to her old self. When he unchained her, he shocked by the sight of her wounds, but they did not seem to harm her, for as soon as she was released she flew around his neck in a tight embrace.

"It's you! It's really you!" She cried.

Overwhelmed by emotions, he hardly had time to enjoy this rare moment of happiness, when her hand flew out and slapped him hard. "And that's for making me forget you!" She told him, scowling.

"I –I am sorry." He stuttered, a bit baffled by her response. "I had no choice. I really didn't want to leave you behind. Please Donna, you have to believe me."

He just kept looking at her with his kind and caring eyes. This wasn't fair, how could she ever keep being angry with him if he looked at her like that? Finally she sucked in a deep breath and buried her face in his chest, crying tears of joy and relief.

"Doctor!" It was her granddad's voice, coming from the other side of the hall. "Over here!"

He gently pushed her away and rushed over to Wilf. The Master was lying on the floor, wounded, bleeding and unconscious.

"Master. Master can you hear me?" His eyes flickered when he called him by his name. "Master? Master!"

He struggled back to consciousness. A pair of dazed brown eyes stared up at him.

"What happened?" The Doctor asked worriedly.

"Rassilon." The name tasted like bitter bile in the Master's mouth. "He came back, together with the drums. He needed a vessel to survive. He took Anne. He took my wife… She absorbed his essence, a Timelord metacrisis turned flesh. She was burning up."

"You tried to wipe her mind." A chill ran down the Doctor's spine when he realized what the Master had done. "You wanted to save her so you tried to seal Rassilon's recollections away from her consciousness."

"I tried." He swallowed hard. "I tried, I really did, but he was too strong. Oh I had wished so hard to watch him burn, but…I couldn't…I couldn't allow Anne to burn with him."

"You stopped her from burning up, kept her alive…and by doing so you kept Rassilon alive." The Doctor muttered. _What was it that the Antoine told him about the prophecy? The Tudor queen is our Lord's true bride. And the Master shall be her salvation. Oh wasn't that clever of our lord president! _Anger rose like bile in his throat when he realized what Rassilon had done. Just when he thought he could bring the Master back to the light, Rassilon was there to rob him from his side and fling him back down into the deepest darkest pit.

"He controls her now, body and soul." The Master whispered, his eyes damp with frustration. "He won Doctor. He always wins…I failed her."

"You didn't fail me, my love."

The Tudor queen was a ghostly figure drifting in front of the great church window, her feet hovering a few meters above the ground. Her beautiful blond hair had turned snow white and framed her pale, heart shaped face, waving gently in invisible currents. Her eyes had turned the color of precious emerald, and stared vacantly into the distance. Her gown was white as well, and there was no color on her face except for the pale pink on her lips. She looked like an angel without wings.

"Anne." He whispered, his voice filled with regret.

"I can't see you. I am blind now to your time and world. My Lord and Master has seen to that, and yet, I can still see so much. Don't blame yourself my love. It's not your fault. What happened was meant to happen. No one could have changed it, not even you."

"What did he do to you?"

"My Lord and Master made me his bride. I follow him now. Don't be sad. We shall meet again. I promise. For the last and final time, and then you'll never be lost and lonely again. Just like me now." She paused. Her blind eyes flickered. "Oh my love. I wish you could hear what I can hear."

"What?"

She returned a smile to him that was all sweetness and serenity. "The most glorious sound of creation. They're calling out for you, longing to come home. The drums my love! The never-ending drums. The heart beat of the universe."

He cried out his wife's name when she disappeared in a flash of bright white light.

**12.**

The journey back to Donna's wedding day did not take long, but to the Master, it seemed that the Tardis took forever to find the right gap in the timevortex to slip back to 21st century of London. He sat on the lower steps of the cylindrical staircase, away from the others. Heartbroken, all he wished for was to be left alone with his thoughts. The very idea of companionship made him feel ill.

"Who was she?"

He looked up, scowling at the nosy redhead who stared at him with the most sickening amount of compassion in her eyes. The Doctor knew better than to try to talk to him at this time, and even her granddad knew when to be silent. Why does this annoying wench never know when to shut her mouth?

"She must be someone important to you." She added hesitantly, the words came tumbling out clumsily. "I saw what you tried to do to save her. The Doctor told me it was a metacrisis…"

"Oh please, what do you know about a Timelord metacrisis?" He scoffed.

"Hang on, I know what a metacrisis is. The Doctor wiped my mind to protect me from one. You see, we were fighting Davros, and a part of the Doctor accidently went into me." She realized she must sound like a complete idiot to him. Her cheeks flushed crimson. "All I was trying to say is…I know how it is to lose someone….Someone you truly care about, because you have to make her forget…"

"She didn't forget." He sounded angry, and bitter. "She remembered." _She said her farewell to me, and told me that I was forgiven. That was the worst part. _

"Who was she?" She dared to ask again.

He gazed at her while the sound of the Tardis gradually died down and the light in the control room dimmed. "A ghost of my past." He told her coldly, and getting up. "One of many."

She opened her mouth to say something, but he felt he had obliged her long enough in meaningless conversation.

"This is your stop I believe." He said, wishing now very hard to get rid of her.

**13.**

The sun was still shining and the sky was radiant blue when Donna stepped out of the blue box and walked down the gravel path that led through the small rose garden at the back of the church.

"I never get use to this." She mumbled. "I swear, my head still is somewhere in 18th century France, but here I am, back on my own wedding day…and looking like a smelly bag-lady in a potato-sack." She added with discontent.

"I told you, you could pick out something out of my wardrobe to wear." The Doctor said, strolling out with his hands in his pockets. "I've got all sorts of dresses, and some of them are quite nice. People tend to leave a lot of their stuff behind in the Tardis." He added quickly when he noticed Wilf lifting a quirky eyebrow.

"If it's makes you feel any better, I don't look much like a proper gent myself." Wilf added with a smile.

Donna heard familiar voices chatting nearby. She looked around the corner and saw some of her friends and relatives gathered outside of the chapel. Shaun was on the phone, and her mother was talking to her uncle Bertie and her great-aunt Violet. Suddenly, she had a déjà vu of the last time she popped up unexpectedly on her own wedding party, and her stomach tightened into a knot. "Maybe I shouldn't get married." Donna muttered. "I mean…not never, just…not today." She added hastily when she saw the look on her granddad's face. "I still want to marry Shaun. But after everything that has happened…" _It all seems so insignificant._ She thought. _Who cares what kind of flowers she got for her bridal bouquet, and how the table arrangements for the guests were set up, or even that they are probably behind schedule right now and she can forget about serving up the oxtail soup hot. _She had found the Doctor. She got her memory back. She had traveled back in time and it had been truly amazing. She wanted to shout it out to the entire world to hear, but couldn't because they would only think that she was gone absolutely mad.

"You want to travel with the Doctor again?" Wilf asked, knowing his granddaughter better than anyone else.

She glanced over her shoulder at Shaun who was still busy talking on the phone. She wondered if he was arguing with the police to get them to find her. He's such a sweet boy. It wasn't that she didn't love him anymore, now that she remembered her former life with her silly spaceman. But before the Doctor wiped her mind, all she had wanted was to stay with the Timelord, the Doctor-Donna, traveling in the Tardis, forever. Shaun was Donna's love of her life, but it had been another Donna, one who had never heard the Ood's songs echo over the valleys of their world of ice and snow, had never faced the wrath of a Racnosqueen, or had ever seen the stars go out in the sky one by one. It wasn't her.

She gazed up at the Doctor, but even if he truly wanted her to come with him, he was not going show it. It had to be her own choice.

"Just one trip. For old time's sake." She finally admitted.

The smile that appeared on his lips was like the sun breaking through the clouds. She had no idea how much he needed her right now. "One trip!" The Doctor beamed. "I'll make sure you're be back on time for your wedding, not a minute late. I swear! Well, maybe a minute. Well, maybe two. It' hard to time these sort of things exactly on the second, but you'll definitely be back before they cut the wedding cake." He crossed his fingers.

"I certainly need to be there by then, since I am the bleeping bride." Donna smiled. She turned to her granddad. "Is that all right?" She asked, feeling a little guilty. "I mean, with the Tardis, we can just come back when we want to. They won't notice."

"Oh my sweet, you've no idea how hard I've wished for this. You and the Doctor, back together again." Wilf smiled, his old eyes were gleaming with tears of joy. "Go on then. Off you go. I'll take care of your mother and Shaun for you."

Donna kissed Wilf on his stubbly cheeks. "Tell Shaun I love him, and that I'll be back soon. _Don't_ let him talk to Nerys. I just saw her, she looks like she's been sipping too much from the fruit-punch and you know how she's like."

"Don't you worry. I'll make sure he behaves himself. Now, go you two. Go have a wonderful adventure and make sure you remember everything, so you can tell me all about it when you return."

Donna gave him one last peck on his cheek. It was followed by a friendly nod from the Doctor, and then they both disappeared inside the blue box. Wilf straightened his back and saluted while the Tardis engines came to life, making such a racket that he wondered why no-one else ever seemed to notice it. It was only when the box and the magical sound had vanished that he suddenly remembered that he had not said his goodbye to the Master.

**14.**

"This is much better." Donna bounced down the staircase like an overexcited puppy. She was wearing a large green sweater and a pair of white jeans. It wasn't exactly a dress, but it was hers. Like the Doctor said, most of his companions had left their belongings behind, and she was thrilled to find her own suitcases tucked away in the corner behind a row of the Doctor's suits. "It's a good thing that I went on that coleslaw diet before my wedding day or I would have never fitted into this. This is like what, three years old?"

"Two and a half." The Doctor answered with a grin. "At least from your perspective. From my perspective, I guess it's more like 25 odd years? 25 years out of fashion, that ensemble you're wearing should be considered retro by now."

"Well at least there are no moth holes in it." She jumped down the last two steps and joined the Doctor next to the Tardis console. "Right then partner in space, where are we going?" She cheered.

"Are you sure that this is a wise decision?"

Donna saw the Master glaring at her from a dark corner of the console room. She had not noticed him until now. _He doesn't want me to come along. _She suddenly realized. _It used to be just him and the Doctor. He might have wanted a third travel companion, but it wasn't me that he had in mind._

"Donna has traveled with me before. I know that we can rely on her." The Doctor replied in her defense.

"Even when we're going to face real dangers?" The Master turned her. "I don't know what you're thinking, that is if you're thinking at all, but this isn't one of the Doctor's cozy little adventures where we'll have a bit of a tumble with the monster of the week before we bring you back for sweet biscuits and tea. We're going after Rassilon. Do you have any idea what that man is capable of?"

"Master, stop scaring her." The Doctor tried.

"I am _warning_ her!" He snapped back. "I have no time to babysit your human pet! Not when we're dealing with Rassilon!"

"I'll look after her." The Doctor answered.

"I don't want to be looked after! I am very capable to babysit myself!" Donna spoke sharply, angered by his mocking attitude towards her. "I mean…I am not…I am not stupid. I saw what happened inside that chapel. I was there. I know it's dangerous, but I want to help. Both you and the Doctor."

There was a short, most awkward moment of silence. The Master kept looking at her, searching for any sign of doubt or weakness in her eyes. _I know I am not the one you wanted. _She thought. _I know you're angry and sad that Anne was taken from you, but_ _the Doctor needs me. Please, please, for the love you bear the Doctor, let me stay._

Finally, the Master took his eyes from her. "Don't expect me lift a finger when she get's herself into trouble again." He growled, and went up the staircase to retreat in his chamber.

"He doesn't like me." Donna muttered.

"Oh I am absolutely positive that he doesn't. But he will learn to like you. Just give him a bit more time. This is not easy for him." The Doctor consoled her, and went back to tinkle with the controls. He had taken the white point star from the Watcher's lightening machine, and had wired it up to the Tardis. A faint blue light shone in the heart of the gem. It pulsed with the regularity of a Timelord's double heartbeat.

"Is this going to lead us to him?" She asked, staring in the blue glow.

"It helps us to track down the drums. If we follow the drums, we will find Rassilon." He pulled over a lever and the Tardis started to reel from side to side like a ship on a stormy sea.

_The End_

_Once again, my apologies for taking so long to complete this. The Master, the Doctor and Donna are to return in the next installment, called "This reflection of me." I will try to complete a couple of chapters before posting the first one on the net, so you guys don't get stuck on a chapter for too long. The next one is going to be a heartbreaker…for the Doctor that is…As always, please review and comment, it keeps me writing._


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